* Astronomy

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RE: Just for Fun

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NASA Announces Plans To Put Man On Bus To Cleveland

Hailing the dawn of a new era in long-distance highway travel, NASA officials unveiled Monday the agency's ambitious plans to put a man on a bus to Cleveland, OH by early 2013.
The complex and dangerous three-day mission, dubbed "Chariot I," is expected to pass through six states and include two brief transfers in Atlanta and Louisville in both directions, at a reported total cost of $360 dollars plus taxes and fees.
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Using 4 straight lines, connect all nine dots without lifting your pen off the paper, or drawing curves.

(Hint ~ think outside the box)

Spoiler

One solution

Blobrana · L

CERN scientists announced today a new particle was just discovered.
The foolion particle had been proposed by theorists to explain how elementary particles could attract so much attention.
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Where on Earth was the highest temperature of recorded?

Spoiler

On 13 September 1922, a high temperature of 57.8°C (136°F) was recorded in Al 'Aziziyah, which is the highest temperature ever measured on Earth.
However, that reading is controversial...
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What is the oldest object you can see with the unaided eye?

Spoiler: Arcturus (Alpha Boötis) is the brightest star in the constellation Boötes.
Arcturus is thought to be an old disk star, and appears to be moving with a group of 52 other such stars, known as the Arcturus stream. Arcturus may have originated in a dwarf satellite galaxy that merged with the Milky Way.
Because the star is deficient in heavy elements such as silicon and iron, it is thought that the star was formed about 10 billion years ago, in a generation of star formation prior to that in which our Sun was formed. This makes it twice as old as our Sun.

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That Mitchell and Webb Look - Moon Landing Sketch

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Microsoft test drive demo of the asteroid belt

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What was the largest hailstone on record?

Spoiler: The largest hailstone ever recorded fell on 22nd June 2003, in the town of Aurora, south-central Nebraska.
Unfortunately only about half of it was recovered.
The hailstone would have measured 17.8 centimetres in diameter and 47.6 centimetres in circumference, this is nearly equal in size to a football.
The hailstone is now preserved at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.
The heaviest hailstone ever documented, weighed in at about 1 kilogram, and fell over Gopalganj, Bangladesh, India, on the 14th April, 1986.

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Update
Giant South Dakota hailstone breaks U.S. record

A giant chunk of hail that plunged into the prairie town of Vivian, South Dakota, last Friday was confirmed today as the heaviest hailstone ever recorded in the United States.
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What is the fastest-growing woody plant?

Spoiler: Bambusa oldhamii
Bambusa oldhamii, known as giant timber bamboo or Oldham's bamboo, is a large species of bamboo originating from Taiwan.
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Bamboo is the fastest-growing woody plant on Earth; it has been measured surging skyward as fast as 121 cm in a 24-hour period, and can also reach maximal growth rate exceeding one metre per hour for short periods of time. Many prehistoric bamboos exceeded heights of 85 metres. Primarily growing in regions of warmer climates during the Cretaceous period, vast fields existed in what is now Asia.

The Fastest Growing Plants on Earth

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