According to a study by the National Science Foundation, only half of Americans believe in evolution, and one in 4 don't know that the Earth orbits the Sun.
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Astronomer Percival Lowell believed that he was the first person to observe canals on Venus, but because of a faulty adjustment of the eyepiece on his telescope, he was in fact looking at the blood vessels in his own eye.
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The Sun and Moon appear to be the same size because the moon is 400 times smaller than the Sun, but 400 times closer to Earth.
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When a massive power outage struck southern California in the 1990s, Los Angeles residents reportedly called 911 to express alarm about strange clouds hovering overhead; they were seeing the Milky Way for the first time.
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There's a mysterious dwarf planet between Mars and Jupiter called 'Ceres' which has never been visited by spacecraft or photographed in detail, however, Earth-bound telescopes reveal a large bright shining spot on the surface of this planet, the origin and nature of which are unknown.
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