Strange Science

Science is good! Here are 15 cool, random things we know because of science.

Science is having a bit of a rough go of it lately. The reputation of academia has declined and our current US president is slashing science funding. Still, the world would be a much worse place if not for science. With that in mind, I thought it would be a celebration of science to note some cool facts about the world science has told us. Hold on to your thinking caps and be ready to learn something neat!

· Fossil fuels, it turns out, are not made from fossils. Or to be more exact, certainly not the fossils of dinosaurs as it is often though. Coal is the product of dead plants that became peat and, over time, as this was covered by new layers over millions of years and under heat and pressure, turned into coal. Scale trees (which looked a bit like Norfolk Island Pines, though these are not scale trees), now largely extinct, not dinosaurs were the main source of coal. Oil is largely the product of dead plankton in the seas. So, no, you’re not burning Dino.

Scale Tree. Image: Falconaumanni. Creative Commons license.

· Eating snow is dehydrating. I actually came across this in the novel The Terror, but it turns out it’s true. The gist is that it burns more energy (and water molecules) for your body to melt the snow than you get water from the snow itself. One snow cone isn’t going to make you go belly up, but relying on snow to hydrate if lost in the frosty woods isn’t going to work. Bring your own water or heating apparatus to melt the snow. If you happen to think of it if planning to get stranded.

· Earth was once a giant snowball. Speaking of snow…lately, all the news has been about global warming. But perhaps 700 million years ago or so, for a period of about 50 million years, the earth was so cold, the oceans were entirely frozen over. Primitive life probably still existed in the oceans under a thicky icy crust, but overall, it sounds worse than a Rhode Island beach day.

Snowball Earth. Image: Oleg Kuznetsov. Creative Commons license.

· Diamonds are worthless. Every girl wants diamonds. But you’re getting ripped off. Ask for an emerald instead. Ok, this one’s a bit more controversial, but Adam Ruins Everything covers the gist. In the case of scarcity, for diamonds scarcity is artificially created by diamond miners themselves who restrict the supply. Apparently, diamonds are actually fairly common and only more so now they can be created artificially.

· Most recycling doesn’t work. Recycling is the sign of a good citizen! Also, it probably does very little to help the environment. Apparently the recycling of plastic is so inefficient and, itself, polluting, it isn’t of much value. At least in the US, paper recycling may actually backfire to the extent it reduces demand for tree farms that absorb carbon dioxide (though the practice does still have defenders, to be fair). By contrast, aluminum recycling appears to be truly effective, so keep it up!