With thousands of well-paid labourers available (the idea that the Pyramids were built by slaves is another myth), planning and building the Pyramids was no easy feat, but it was well within their limits of understanding. The Egyptians were excellent astronomers, accomplished engineers and superb mathematicians. There is nothing particularly mysterious about how the Pyramids were constructed. WE DON'T KNOW HOW THE PYRAMIDS WERE BUILT This gives the morbid optical illusion that both are still growing - but they're not. In death the body dehydrates rapidly and, as a result, the skin retracts, exposing more nail and hair. HAIR AND NAILS CONTINUE GROWING AFTER DEATH While it is unlikely you will ever find two identical snowflakes, the chances that out of all the quadrillions that have fallen no two are exactly alike are slim. The size, and shape, of a snowflake depends on many things: the temperature at which it formed, windspeed, impurities in the ice and so on. Snowflakes are aggregates of tiny ice crystals, which can arrange themselves into a fantastic array of beautiful, usually six-sided shapes. There is no hard evidence to support this. It is now thought that some parrots may be able actually to understand - not just mimic -Įlements of human speech, and other birds have been seen engaging in hiding food and even playing tricks on each other. In 2002, a crow called Betty made the news when Science magazine reported that she was able to fashion complicated hooks out of pieces of wire to retrieve food from a tube (chimps cannot do this). Some species of bird are among the cleverest animals known to science, and one or two may be smarter even than chimpanzees, particularly Corvids (crows and their relatives). The Earth's gravity does diminish the farther away you travel, but even 220,000 miles away, it is still strong enough to keep the Moon in orbit!Īstronauts are 'weightless' not because they are in zero gravity, but because they are in an endless freefall (you would notice the same effect if you were stuck in a plummeting lift -you too would experience 'weightlessness'. There is no scientific evidence that these animals commit suicide. In fact, the film-makers contrived this scene (it was filmed in Canada and tame lemmings were pushed over a prop cliff into a river). The myth of thousands of lemmings - small Arctic vole-like rodents - hurling themselves over the cliffs of Norway was cemented in the popular imagination by a 1958 Disney documentary called White Wilderness. The amount of time men spend thinking about sex will vary hugely from individual to individual but is unlikely, except in the most hormone-ridden teenager, to be several times a minute. It certainly didn't arise from any serious psychological research. The myth is usually accompanied by the statement 'because women have to give birth', but of course no one knows how men would cope with this experience! The research that has been done on this actually suggests the opposite - that women feel hurt at a rather lower threshold than men. WOMEN HAVE A HIGHER PAIN THRESHOLD THAN MEN This would certainly be fast enough to give you a nasty bruise or cut, but it would not stand much chance of actually killing you. Thanks to air resistance, it is unlikely that a small coin dropped from any height would be able to exceed 30mph. Lightning strikes many locations over and over again - high trees, tall buildings, mountain tops - and of course lightning conductors whose very purpose is to be struck time and time again.Ī PENNY DROPPED FROM A SKYSCRAPER WOULD KILL A PERSON LIGHTNING NEVER STRIKES IN THE SAME PLACE TWICEĪ strange myth because it is so demonstrably untrue. Here, the Mail's science editor dispels some of the most popular scientific misconceptions. Did you know that according to the laws of science, bumble bees are too big to fly?Īnd did you know that women can stand more pain than men? Well, perhaps you thought you knew.īut these so-called facts are, in reality, utter tosh - just two of the many 'urban myths' that blight our understanding of the world around us.
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