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 Space Shuttle main engine weighs 1/7th as much as a train engine but delivers as much horsepower as 39 locomotives.
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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.
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It 'snows' metal on Venus.
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In 1859, the largest known geomagnetic storm struck the Caribbean, causing an aurora and telegraphs could even operate without a power source.
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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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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.
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Not only are there rogue planets floating through space completely alone, not orbiting any stars, but it’s possible that these pitch-black lonely planets support life.
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