SPACE

1. Saturn’s rings are made up of particles of ice, dust and rock. Some particles are as small as grains of sand while others are much larger than skyscrapers.

2. Jupiter is larger than 1,000 Earths.

3. The Great Red Spot on Jupiter is a hurricane-like storm system that was first detected in the early 1600’s.

4. Comet Hale-Bopp is putting out approximately 250 tons of gas and dust per second. This is about 50 times more than most comets produce.

5. The Sun looks 1600 times fainter from Pluto than it does from the Earth.

6. There is a supermassive black hole right in the middle of the Milky Way galaxy that is 4 million times the mass of the Sun.

7. Halley’s Comet appears about every 76 years.

8. The orbits of most asteroids lie partially between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

9. Asteroids and comets are believed to be ancient remnants of the formation of our Solar System (More than 4 billion years ago!).

10. Comets are bodies of ice, rock and organic compounds that can be several miles in diameter.

11. The most dangerous asteroids, those capable of causing major regional or global disasters, usually impact the Earth only once every 100,000 years on average.

12. Some large asteroids even have their own moon.

13. Near-Earth asteriods have orbits that cross the Earth’s orbit. These could potentially impact the Earth.

14. There are over 20 million observable meteors per day.

15. Only one or two meteorites per day reach the surface of Earth.

16. The largest found meteorite was found in Hoba, Namibia. It weighed 60 tons.

17. The typical size of a meteor is about one cubic centimeter, which is equivalent to the size of a sugar cube.

18. Each day, Earth accumulate 10 to 100 tons of material.

19. There are over 100 billion galaxies in the universe.

20. The largest galaxies contain nearly 400 billion stars.

21. The risk of a falling meteorite striking a human occurs once every 9,300 years.

22. A piece of a neutron star the size of a pin point would way 1 million tons.

23. Europa, Jupiter’s moon, is completely covered in ice.

24. Light reflecting off the moon takes 1.2822 seconds to reach Earth.

25. There has only been one satellite destroyed by a meteor, it was the European Space Agency’s Olympus in 1993.

26. The International Space Station orbits at 248 miles above the Earth.

27. The Earth orbits the Sun at 66,700mph.

28. Venus spins in the opposite direction compared to the Earth and most other planets. This means that the Sun rises in the West and sets in the East.

29. The Moon is moving away from the Earth at about 34cm per year.

30. The Sun, composed mostly of helium and hydrogen, has a surface temperature of 6000 degrees Celsius.

...Did you know?

That the Sun makes up 99.86% of the Solar System's mass! That means that all the planets put together (including Jupiter) as well as all the asteroids only make up about 0.14% of the Solar System's mass

That Jupiter's magnetic field is so massive that it pours billions of Watts into Earths magnetic field every day!

That a massive body 100km wide travelling at over 512,000km/h crashed into Mercury to form the Caloris Basin. The impaact was so great it sent shockwaves round Mercury creating its hilly lineated terrain.

That just a pinhead of the Sun's raw material could kill someone up to 160 kilometres away!

That the length of a Plutonian year is 248 of our years! That means that one orbit of the Sun takes about 2 and a half Earth centuries. That's a quarter of a Millenium!

That Olympus Mons (on Mars) is the largest Volcanic mountain in the Solar System. It is 600 km across and 27 km high! And you thought Mount Everest (about 8 and a half km high) was tall! To see a great overhead picture of it click here.

That a Supernova explosion produces more energy in its first ten seconds than the Sun during the whole of its 10 billion year lifetime and that for a brief period, it creates more energy than the rest of a galaxy put together!!

That the comet with the longest ever recorded tail is the Great Comet of 1843. Its tail stretched over 800 million kilometres! This is about the same distance the Earth is from Jupiter!

That the energy in the sunlight we see today started out in the core of the Sun 30,000 years ago - it spent most of this time passing through the dense atoms that make the sun and just 8 minutes to reach us once it had left the Sun!

That almost all of the heavier elements in your body (eg calcium, iron, carbon) were made somewhere in supernovae explosions!

That some rocks found on Earth are actually pieces of Mars!

That Saturn has such a low density that it would float if put in water!

That due to the fact that water expands when heated, the Atantic ocean increses in width by 3cm every year!

That some volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io eject material at speeds of up to 1km/second! This is about 20 times faster than the volcanoes here on Earth can manage it!

That the amount of the Sun's energy reaching the Earth's atmosphere (known as the Solar constant) is equivalent to 1.37 kw of electricity per square metre!

Top 10 Richest Countries In The World

Country	GDP Per Capita ($)
Luxembourg	80,800
Qatar	75,900
Bermuda	69,900
Norway	55,600
Kuwait	55,300
UAE	55,200
Singapore	48,900
USA	46,000
Ireland	45,600
Equatorial Guinea	44,100

Amazing facts about human brain

1. Women are twice as likely to be diagnosed with depression than men in the United States.

2. The human brain has about 100,000,000,000 (100 billion) neurons.

3. From all the oxygen that a human breathes, twenty percent goes to the brain.

4. People who ride on roller coasters have a higher chance of having a blood clot in the brain.

5. Once a human reaches the age of 35, he/she will start losing approximately 7,000 brain cells a day. The cells will never be replaced.

6. It is not possible to tickle yourself. The cerebellum, a part of the brain, warns the rest of the brain that you are about to tickle yourself. Since your brain knows this, it ignores the resulting sensation.

7. A women from Berlin Germany has had 3,110 gallstones taken out of her gall bladder.

8. In America, the most common mental illness is Anxiety Disorders.

9. Your brain is 80% water.

10. Your brain is move active and thinks more at night than during the day.

Top 10 largest temples in the world

10.Baalbek

Baalbek, also called Heliopolis, is a spectacular archaeological site in northeasternLebanon. From the 1st century BC and over a period of two centuries, the Romans built three temples here: Jupiter, Bacchus and Venus. Created to be the largest temple in the Roman empire, the temple of Jupiter was lined by 54 massive granite columns. Only 6 of these titanic columns remain standing but even they are incredibly impressive. The best preserved temple at the site is the Temple of Bacchus built in 150 AD. The temple is 69 meters long and 36 meters wide. Its walls are adorned by 42 Corinthian columns, 19 of which remain upright in position standing 19 meters (62 feet) high.

9.Temple of Christ the Saviour

One of the most imposing and controversial buildings in Moscow, the resurrected Temple of Christ the Saviour has had a short but turbulent history. It was originally commissioned after the defeat of Napoleon, but construction did not begin until 1839. In 1931 it was blown to pieces by orders of Stalin to make way for a proposed Palace of the Soviets, which was never built. In 1990, the Russian Orthodox Church received permission to rebuilt the cathedral. Completed in 2000, the new cathedral is loosely based on the original design, but constructed with modern building materials. At a height of 105 meters (344 feet) it is the tallest Orthodox church in the world.

8.Temple of Saint Sava

t) long from and 81 meters (266 feet) wide. It is 70 meters (230 feet) tall, with the main gold-plated cross on top of the dome extends the church for 12 more meters (39 feet). It has a surface area of 3,500 m2 on the ground floor.

The Temple of Saint Sava in Belgrade is the largest Orthodox church building in the world. It is dedicated to the founder of the Serbian Orthodox Church. The construction of the church began in 1985 and was mostly completed by 2004. The internal decorations are still not finished. In English, it is usually called a cathedral because of its size and importance but it is not the seat of a bishop and therefore technically not a cathedral. In Serbian it is called a hram (temple). The church is 91 meters (299 fee

7.Tikal (Temple IV)

Situated in the lowland rainforest of northern Guatemala, Tikal was the largest Mayan city between ca. 200 to 900 AD with an estimated population between 100,000 and 200,000 inhabitants. Tikal contains 6 very large step pyramids. The largest, Temple-pyramid IV, is some 72 meters (230 feet) high and was finished around 720 AD. Temple IV is the largest temple built anywhere in the Maya region, and as it currently stands is the tallest pre-Columbian structure in the Americas although the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan may originally have been taller, as may have been one of the jungle covered pyramids at El Mirador.

6.Jetavanaramaya

Located in the city of Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka, the Jetavanaramaya is the largest stupa in the world if measured by volume. The temple was built by king Mahasena in the 3rd century AD and took 15 years to complete. Approximately 93.3 million baked bricks were used in the construction. With a height of 122 meters (400 feet), Jetavanaramaya was the third tallest structure in the world behind the pyramids of Giza at the time of its completion. The diameter of the dome itself is approximately 95 meters (312 feet).

5.Sri Ranganathaswamy

Dedicated to Lord Ranganatha (a reclining form of Lord Vishnu), the Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple in Srirangam is an important shrine that receives millions of visitors and pilgrims every year. With an area of 156 acres (6,31,000 m²), the Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple is one of the largest temples in the world. In fact, the temple can be easily termed as the largest functioning Hindu temple complex in the world. The oldest structure of the temple dates back to the 10th century. There are 21 gopurams (tower), among which the Rajagopuram is the biggest temple in South India. It is 73 meters (240 feet) in height, and dates from the 17th century, although it was only completed in 1987.

4.Akshardham Temple

Completed in 2005 by the spiritual organization BAPS, no expense has been spared in decorating the Akshardham temple. The building was inspired and moderated by Pramukh Swami Maharaj, the current head of Swaminarayan Hinduism. The central monument is 43 meters (141 feet) high, 96 meters (316 feet) wide, and 110 meters (370 feet) long, and is covered top to bottom with carved details of flora, fauna, dancers, musicians, and deities. It is constructed entirely from Rajasthani pink sandstone and Italian Carrara marble, and has no support from steel or concrete.

3.Borobudur

Located on the Indonesian island of Java, 40 km (25 miles) northwest of Yogyakarta, the Borobudur is the largest Buddhist temple in the world. The temple was built over a period of some 75 years in the 8th and 9th centuries by the kingdom of Sailendra, out of an estimated 2 million blocks of stone. The Borobodur can be divided into three groups: base, body, and top, which resembles the three major division of a human body. The base is a 123×123 meters (403.5×403.5 feet) square in size and 4 meters (13 feet) high of walls. The total surface area is approximately 2,500 m2. The body is composed of 5 square platforms each with diminishing heights. The top is a monumental stupa with a main dome at the center . The dome has a height of 35 meters (115 feet) from the ground level.

2.Karnak (Great Hypostyle Hall)

Although badly ruined, few sites in Egypt are more impressive than Karnak. It is the largest ancient temple complex in the world, and represents the combined achievement of many generations of Egyptian builders. Karnak actually consists of several temples. One of most famous structures of Karnak is the Hypostyle Hall, a hall area of 5,000 m2 (50,000 sq ft). The 134 massive columns arranged in 16 rows supported a roof that has now fallen. At a height of 24 meters (80 feet) the 2 middle rows are higher than the others.

1.Angkor Wat Temple

Angkor Wat (”City Temple”) is a vast temple complex featuring the magnificent remains of several capitals of the Khmer Empire, from the 9th to the 15th century AD. These include the famous Angkor Wat temple, the largest temple in the world. The Angkor temple stands on a raised terrace above the rest of the city. It is made of three rectangular galleries rising to a central tower, each level higher than the last. The outer gallery measures 187 x 215 meters (614 x 705 feet). After this, the next two galleries are connected to each other. On the second level, it measures 100 x 115 meters (328 x 377 feet). The inner gallery is a 60 x 60 meter (197 x 197 feet) square area. The tower above the central shrine rises 65 meters (213 feet) above the ground.

Taj Mahal

The Taj Mahal is a mausoleum located in Agra, India, built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal . The Taj Mahal (also "the Taj") is considered the finest example of Mughal architecture, a style that combines elements from Islamic, Indian and Persian architectural styles.In 1983, the Taj Mahal became a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
While the white domed marble mausoleum is its most familiar component, the Taj Mahal is actually an integrated complex of structures. Building began around 1632 and was completed around 1653, and employed thousands of artisans and craftsmen.The construction of the Taj Mahal was entrusted to a board of architects under imperial supervision including Abd ul-Karim Ma'mur Khan, Makramat Khan, and Ustad Ahmad Lahauri. Lahauri is generally considered to be the principal designer.

Soon after the Taj Mahal's completion, Shah Jahan was deposed by his son Aurangzeb and put under house arrest at nearby Agra Fort. Upon Shah Jahan's death, Aurangzeb buried him in the mausoluem next to his wife.
By the late 19th century, parts of the buildings had fallen badly into disrepair. During the time of the Indian rebellion of 1857, the Taj Mahal was defaced by British soldiers and government officials, who chiseled out precious stones and lapis lazuli from its walls. At the end of the 19th century, British viceroy Lord Curzon ordered a massive restoration project, which was completed in 1908. He also commissioned the large lamp in the interior chamber, modeled after one in a Cairo mosque. During this time the garden was remodeled with British-style lawns that are still in place today.

Phobias

Ablutophobia - Fear of washing or bathing.

Achluophobia - Fear of darkness.

Acousticophobia - Fear of noise.

Agliophobia - Fear of pain.

Ailurophobia - Fear of cats.

Angrophobia - Fear of becoming angry.

Bathophobia - Fear of depth

Bibliophobia - Fear of books.

Androphobia - Fear of men.

Cynophobia - Fear of dogs or rabies

Chromophobia - Fear of colors.

Daemonophobia - Fear of demons.

Anthophobia - Fear of flowers.

Aurophobia - Fear of gold.

Ecophobia - Fear of home.

Geliophobia - Fear of laughter

Febriphobia - Fear of fever.

Zoophobia - Fear of animals.