What was an auroch? An auroch is a type of wild cattle that went extinct during the Bronze Age. It is probably the wild ancestor of modern domestic cattle. There is a lot of talk about trying to bring aurochs back from extinction, but I don’t know if that will happen. The word auroch comes […]
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What is Agent Orange? Agent Orange is a herbicide that is also a defoliant. That means it makes trees lose their leaves. Agent Orange got its name because the 55 gallon barrel it was stored in had an orange band around it. The US military used several different types of herbicides and they all had
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Is it possible to deflect an asteroid? It is, to a certain extent. The deflection has to happen early enough, and the asteroid has to be small enough for it to work. Earth has been hit by countless asteroids over the eons. We are hit by over 17,000 meteors a year. Meteors are pieces of
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What is vulcanization? Vulcanization is a process that changes natural rubber into a stronger and more durable material. This makes rubber far more useful, but is terrible for the environment. Humans have used natural rubber for thousands of years. There are over 2,500 different trees that produce rubber, but the main one is called Hevea
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What is a quasar? A quasar is a very bright energy source at the center of a young, newly formed galaxy. All of the quasars we can see are incredibly far away from us. The word quasar is the shortened form of quasi-stellar radio source and they were named by an astrophysicist called Hong-Yee Chiu
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What is Esperanto? Esperanto is a language constructed by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887. He meant it to be the international language. Around the world there are 2,000 native speakers of Esperanto and 100,000 people that can speak it. The word “Esperanto” means “one who hopes”. It is an artificially created language and the most
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What is special about the rock in Turkey? Most of the rock in Turkey is just regular rock, but some of it is soft volcanic rock that is easy to carve and sets harder than concrete. This is not just in Turkey, but a lot of it has been found there. In Turkey, there are
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How does facial recognition work? There are different types, but they basically break the face down into a digital map and then compare those digital maps. It is similar to the way software like Shazam works out what a song is. All of the notes from all of the instruments are translated into a digital
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What was the problem with Concorde? Concorde was far too expensive, was not very environmentally friendly, couldn’t carry many people, and it wasn’t allowed to go supersonic over land because of the sonic boom. Concorde first flew with Air France and British Airways in 1976. The supersonic plane flew continuously for 27 years before being
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What is the Voynich manuscript? It is a 200 page, vellum codex, with hand drawn pictures. It is written in a language that no one knows or can read. The Voynich manuscript is named after a Polish bookseller called Wilfred Voynich, who bought it in 1912. Today, the book is owned by Yale University and
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