Just sayin' science moment #4: Your face has gravity

It surprised me recently when I realised that so many people didn't know very much about gravity at all. Even my freind Luke, who's very good at general science thought it only came from planets. As the title suggests, however, that is very wrong.
The point is, all mass has gravity. Everything you can see and some things you can't. A particle of H2O. A polar bear. And, yes, your face. With gravity, though, size really does matter. The bigger something is, the stronger its gravitational pull, and this is why you don't feel the gravity from your face, or a polar bear or a particle of H2O - your face is attached to you anyway, so it contributes to your internal gravity, a polar bear is very far away, so (assuming you don't live in the artic circle) is to distant to have any effect, and a particle of H2O is far too tiny to pull you (in fact, you would pull the H2O!)
Here's the sciencey bit.

There are four dimensions - up-down, left-right, forwards-backwards and time.
Combined, these make space-time and we are all moving 'through' space and 'along' time right now. In order to help you comprehend this incomprehensible dimension of space-time and the effect that mass has on it, i have an analogy originaly devised my Marcus Chown.
Imagine an ant on a trampoline. All it ever sees is left-right and forwards-backwards, there's nothing for it to climb up. Then imagine you put a connonball in the centre in the middle of the trampoline and the ant suddenly slides in, down the curve. "wow!" says ant "I can go up and down aswell!". Even though he can't talk and never really said that, he's suddenly realised a new dimension that he would never normaly be able to see.
Well space-time is our unseen dimension, we are the ant and planet earth is our cannonball. We are pulled towards the earth because it's obviously very close, it's evidently very large and there's clearly nothing near and big enough to pull us away.
That's how gravity works, the bigger something is, the more mass it has and the stronger its gravitational pull. The closer something is, the closer its curve in space-time is and the more control it has over you.

Everything has gravity. Except waves (like sound, not sea).

Just sayin' science moment #3: Who discovered gravity?

Well Isaac Newton (4 January 1643 – 31 March 1727), the english physicist, astronomer, natural philosopher, mathematician, alchemist and theologian right? Yes, but not according to Islam.

In the Qur'an, It says that a muslim called Mullah Nasradim sat under a shady oak tree near a field of watermelons. He proceeded to speculate as to why Allah, the islamic god, had made watermelons grow with tiny tendril-like roots, but the tiny acorns had the huge oak to support them and not the other way around. An acorn then fell on his head and he was most pleased that Allah had done things this way or else the watermelon would have covered him in red watermelon juice. It doesn't say this, but Mullah had then discovered gravity in the same way as Isaac Newton and a long time before him but no-one knew about this? hmm.

In addition, foolish Mr. Nasradim had failed to realise that if watermelons grew on oak trees they would fall off long before they got ripe, because watermelons tend to be far heavier.
Also, this oak tree would have evolved in a different way to accomodate such heavy fruits and would look much different, and probably wouldn't be called an oak tree, probably would have been in a different place and then nothing would fall on his head but he also would have no shade. Either that or maybe having them grow on the ground really is the best way, you invalid.
Earth's been around for 4.54 billions years to evolve into what it is today, so the next time you see a massive plant on the ground and a tiny seeds being suspended, consider whatever religious and philosophical ponder you want to say and keep it to yourself.

50 interesting science facts

1 – The speed of light is generally rounded down to 186,000 miles per second. In exact terms it is 299,792,458 m/s (equal to 186,287.49 miles per second).

2 – It takes 8 minutes 17 seconds for light to travel from the Sun’s surface to the Earth.

3 – 10 percent of all human beings ever born are alive at this very moment.

4 – The Earth spins at 1,000 mph but it travels through space at an incredible 67,000 mph.

5 – Every year, over one million earthquakes shake the Earth.

6 – When Krakatoa erupted in 1883, its force was so great it could be heard 4,800 kilometers away in Australia.

7 – Every second around 100 lightning bolts strike the Earth.

8 – Every year lightning kills 1000 people.

9 – In October 1999 an Iceberg the size of London broke free from the Antarctic ice shelf .

10 – If you could drive your car straight up you would arrive in space in just over an hour.

11 – Human tapeworms can grow up to 22.9m.

12 – The Moon is 4.56 billion years old, but the Earth is around 4.8 billion years old (The moon was formed from the Earth)

13 – The dinosaurs became extinct before the Rockies or the Alps were formed.

14 – Female black widow spiders eat their males after mating.

15 – When a flea jumps, the rate of acceleration is 20 times that of the space shuttle during launch.

16 – If our Sun were just inch in diameter, the nearest star would be 445 miles away.

17 – Astronauts cannot belch – there is no gravity to separate liquid from gas in their stomachs.

18 – The air at the summit of Mount Everest, 29,029 feet is only a third as thick as the air at sea level.

19 – One million, million, million, million, millionth of a second after the Big Bang the Universe was the size of a pea.
20 – DNA was first discovered in 1869 by Swiss Friedrich Mieschler.

21 – The molecular structure of DNA was first determined by Watson and Crick in 1953.

22 – The first synthetic human chromosome was constructed by US scientists in 1997.

23 – The thermometer was invented in 1607 by Galileo.

24 – Alfred Nobel invented dynamite in 1866.

25 – Wilhelm Rontgen won the first Nobel Prize for physics for discovering X-rays in 1895.

26 – The tallest tree ever was an Australian eucalyptus – In 1872 it was measured at 435 feet tall.

27 – Christian Barnard performed the first heart transplant in 1967 – the patient lived for 18 days.

28 – An electric eel can produce a shock of up to 650 volts.

29 – ‘Wireless’ communications took a giant leap forward in 1962 with the launch of Telstar, the first satellite capable of relaying telephone and satellite TV signals.

30 – The Ebola virus kills 4 out of every 5 humans it infects.

31 – In 4.5 to 5 billion years the Sun will run out of fuel and turn into a Red Giant.

32 – Giraffes often sleep for only 20 minutes in any 24 hours. They may sleep up to 2 hours (in spurts – not all at once), but this is rare. They never lie down.

33 – There are 60,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body.

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

35 – On the day that Alexander Graham Bell was buried the entire US telephone system was shut down for 1 minute in tribute.

36 – The low frequency call of the humpback whale is the loudest noise made by a living creature.

37 – Matter can be in two superpositions at once, but in minute amounts for minute amounts of time.

38 – Each person sheds 40lbs of skin in his or her lifetime.

39 – At 15 inches the eyes of giant squids are the largest on the planet.

40 – The Universe contains over 100 billion galaxies.

41 – Wounds infested with maggots heal quickly and without spread of gangrene or other infection.

42 – More germs are transferred shaking hands than kissing.

43 – The fastest speed a falling raindrop can hit you is 18mph.

44 – It would take over an hour for a heavy object to sink 6.7 miles down to the deepest part of the ocean.

45 – Around a million, billion neutrinos from the Sun will pass through your body while you read this sentence.

46 – The deepest part of any ocean in the world is the Mariana trench in the Pacific with a depth of 35,797 feet.

47 – Every hour the Universe expands by around 1 billion miles in all directions.

48 – Somewhere in the flicker of a badly tuned TV set is the background radiation from the Big Bang.

49 – Even traveling at the speed of light it would take 2 million years to reach the nearest large galaxy, Andromeda.

50 – A thimbleful of a neutron star would weigh over 100 million tons.

Improved from a quote from http://immenseknowledge.blogspot.com/2006/10/50-interesting-science-facts.html. I havn't personaly checked all of these facts yet though.

A history of shuttle launches: December

2nd December 1988, Atlantis STS-27, and in 1990, Columbia STS-35, and in 1992, Discovery STS-53, and in 1993, Endeavour STS-61

4th December 1965, Gemini 7, and in 1998, Endeavour STS-88

5th December 2001, Endeavour STS-108

7th December 1972, Apollo 17 (America and Challenger)

9th December 2006, Discovery STS-116

15th December 1965, Gemini 6

19th December 1999, Discovery STS-103

21st December 1968, Apollo 8 launch

A history of shuttle launches: November

3rd November 1994, Atlantis STS-66

8th November 1984, Discovery STS-51A

11th November 1966, Gemini 12, and in 1982, Columbia STS-5

12th November 1981, Columbia STS-2, and in 1995, Atlantis STS-74

14th November 1969, Apollo 12 (Yankee Clipper and Intrepid), and in 2008, Endeavour STS-126

15th November 1990, Atlantis STS-38

16th November 1973, Skylab 4, and in 2009, Atlantis STS-129

19th November 1996, Columbia STS-80, and in 1997, Columbia STS-87

22nd November 1989, Discovery STS-33

23rd November 2002, Endeavour STS-113

24th November 1991, Atlantis STS-44

26th November 1985, Atlantis STS-61B

28th November 1983, Columbia STS-9

30th November 2000, Endeavour STS-97

A history of shuttle launches: October

3rd October 1962, Mercury Atlas 8 Sigma 7, and in 1985, Atlantis STS-51J

5th October 1984, Challenger STS-41G

6th October 1990, Discovery STS-41C

7th October 2002, Atlantis STS-112

11th October 1968, Apollo 7, and in 2000, Discovery STS-92

14th October 1066, Battle of Hastings

18th October 1989, Atlantis STS-34, and in 1993, Columbia STS-58

20th October 1995, Columbia STS-73

22nd October 1992, Columbia STS-52

23rd October 2007, Discovery STS-120

29th October 1998, Discovery STS-95

30th October 1985, Challenger STS-61A

A history of shuttle launches: September

7th September 1995, Endeavour STS-69

8th September 2000, Atlantis STS-106

9th September 1994, Discovery STS-64, and in 2006, Atlantis STS-115

12th September 1966, Gemini 11, and in 1991, Discovery-48, and in 1992, Endeavour STS-47, and in 1993, Discovery STS-51

16th September 1996, Atlantis STS-79

25th September 1997, Atlantis STS-86

29th September 1988, Discovery STS-26

30th September 1994, Endeavour STS-68