The Seven Wonders

           The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World compiled by ancient Greek historians are: The Great Pyramid of Giza, The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, The Statue of Zeus at Olympia, The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, The Colossus of Rhodes and The Lighthouse of Alexandria.

Earth's Record Holders

           Highest mountain on Earth, Mt. Everest grows about 4 millimeters a year since two tectonic plates which collided millions of years ago to form the Himalayas, continue to press against each other. Earths highest waterfall is at Angel Falls in Venezuela which drops 3,212 feet (979 meters). Hottest place on earth is Azizia in Libya 136 degrees Fahrenheit (57.8 Celsius) and coldest was in Vostok, Antarctica -129 Fahrenheit (-89 Celsius). Pacific is the biggest ocean (32.6% of the Earth's surface). Interesting fact is that Amazon recently became longest river by a bit more than 100 meters. According to Guido Gelli (director of science at the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) "Today, we can consider the Amazon the longest river in the world". Amazon is 4,225 miles (6,800 kilometers) long and the Nile is 4,160 miles long (6,695 kilometers).

Number Thirteen

          The fear of number 13 is called triskaidekaphobia and it was derived from treiskaideka, the Greek word for thirteen and phobia. There were thirteen people at Christ's Last Supper before his captivity, it is recorder that Christ was crucified on Friday. Routine mission to the moon goes drastically wrong on Apollo 13. Some hotels skip number thirteen when numbering rooms. In Formula 1, there is no car with the number 13.

Smallest Country Molossia

            One of the oldest micronations, the republic of Molossia It is located in Dayton, Nevada. It is inhabited by only four citizens, one of whom, Kevin Baugh is the president. It was founded in May 1977 by Baugh when he was aged fourteen and was formerly known as the republic of Vuldnstein. It has its own space program, has a railway and issues currency (valora) as well. Relations with the neighboring Muchistan have been troubled of late. In 2000, Molassia staged the first ever Micronation Olympic games in tune with the Sydney Olympics.

Travel Back In Time?

        Ever since H G Wells' 'Time Machine', time travel has been the topic of science fiction and has fascinated human minds - young and old alike. However, modern say research in physics shows that this actually is not possible. Particularly after the revolution of the theory of relativity, it is known that space and time are intertwined in a complicated manner such that any body that has mass causes the space-time around it to curve so that it accommodates that body with mass. In addition, although, you can move forward and back in any of the three spatial directions, you can only move forward in time.

Andromeda Galaxy Facts

             Closest spiral galaxy to our Milky Way galaxy is Andromeda and even traveling at the speed of light it would take 2 million years to reach it. Andromeda Galaxy, Milky Way, the Triangulum Galaxy, and about 30 smaller galaxies belong to a group called Local Group. There are 100 billion galaxies that we can observe. Prediction is that there is much more, but Hubble Space Telescope couldn't detect them. The Andromeda Galaxy and the Milky Way is predicted to merge within the next 5 billion years. In the event like this smaller galaxies are consumed by larger ones. Andromeda galaxy is twice as large as Milky Way.

The Age Of The Universe

           After several debates, astronomers have determined the age of the universe by using a Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. By examining the microwave background radiation that WMAP provided, astronomers were able to pin down the age of the universe, accurate to 1%, to 13.7 billion years old.