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Archive for the tag “MinuteEarth”

09 Mar 2020

Why Earth Has Two Levels

From the tip of Mount Everest to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, elevations on Earth span more than 65,000 feet. These elevations are actually super rare and the vast majority of our planet’s surface falls somewhere in the middle.

Earth’s outer shell is made of two materials, whose different densities and thicknesses give rise to the different levels. And if you wanted further proof, draw the Earth’s elevation on a graph and you get two distinct humps–two levels. Here’s more from MinuteEarth.

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26 Feb 2020
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Earth’s Fastest-Growing Plant

When it comes to upward growth, bamboo is the fastest-growing plant on Earth. Some plants can grow 3 feet a day and can rise as tall as a 10-story building in just eight weeks. Find out the key to this incredible growth in this edition of MinuteEarth.

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12 Dec 2019

Why It’s So Hot Underground

Back in the Middle Ages, miners noticed that the deeper they dug into the Earth, the hotter it got. Physicist William Thompson, aka Lord Kelvin of temperature fame, theorized that Earth started out hot and has been cooling ever since. He used the hypothesis to predict the age of our planet, but overshot the number by several million years. What was missing in his theory, was his failure to detect the rigidity of the Earth’s mantle, the layer between the crust and the core. MinuteEarth host Emily Elert explains further.

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21 Nov 2019

How Long Can We Live?

With each passing second, the cells in our bodies accrue a bit more damage. So it stands to reason that as we get older, the odds of dying increase.

Humans today are living, on average, about twice as long as they did in the late 1800s, thanks to medicine and sanitation.

But the oldest people on Earth are only living a few years longer than they did a century ago. So something seems to be limiting the human lifespan. Find out what on this episode of MinuteEarth.

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23 Sep 2019

Our Animals Instincts

A study reveals that the decisions humans make while browsing the internet are surprising similar to those of animals who forage for food. We probably optimize like animals, because we are animals, sharing critical decision-making circuitry. MinuteEarth tells us why.

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07 Jul 2019

Your Unique Fingerprints

Even if your fingerprints have boring designs, they are still unique to you. In fact, there’s no one on Earth–past, present or future–that has the same prints as yours. MinuteEarth tells us more about our loops, whorls and arches.

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16 Jun 2019

Morocco the Envy of the World

Russia is the largest country in the world, China is the most populated and the United States is the richest. And then there’s tiny Morocco, which isn’t exactly a global superpower but has something that every country wants–phosphorous.

Morocco has three-quarters of the world’s known reserves of rock phosphate, which is the main source of the element phosphorous, critical to civilization because plants need it to grow and we need plants to eat.  Learn more in this edition of MinuteEarth.

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28 Apr 2019

Your Fingerprints are Unique

Because of the chaotic way fingerprints develop and the multiplying effect of compound probability, it’s basically impossible for any two fingers to have matching prints. In fact, there’s no one in the world–past, present or future–that has a fingerprint matching anyone of yours. MinuteEarth explains.

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24 Jul 2017

Life Sucks for Male Hyenas

Thanks to spotted hyenas’ unusual social structure, males experience a tough life of solitude, harassment, and deprivation. More from MinuteEarth.

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08 Dec 2015

The Weirdness of Inheritance

Inheriting DNA cells can be weirder than you think. Chemical switches attached to DNA turn genes on and off or up and down, telling the machinery which proteins to produce and in what quantities. These swithces, called epigenetic tags, make for some very strange DNA passed down from our ancestors. Emily Elert explains in this fascinating edition of Minute Earth.

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