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.
4
The Space Shuttle main engine weighs 1/7th as much as a train engine but delivers as much horsepower as 39 locomotives.
147
An international team of astronomers has spotted the farthest known gravitational lens and, as Albert Einstein predicted, it is a galaxy that deflects and intensifies the light of a much further object.
9
If NASA sent birds into space they would soon die; they need gravity to swallow.
146
Earth is the only planet in our solar system that's not named after a god or goddess.
17
It takes a photon 170,000 years to travel from the core of the Sun to the surface, but only 8 minutes to travel the rest of the way to Earth.
6
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.
5