05/11/10

Facts about your body




The length from your wrist to your elbow is the same as the length of your foot.

Your heart beats 101,000 times a day. During your lifetime it will beat about 3 billion times and pump about 400 million litres (800 million pints) of blood.

It is impossible to lick your elbow. Well, for almost everyone… but a few can.
Your mouth produces 1 litre (1.8 pints) of saliva a day.

The human head contains 22 bones. More on the head and brains

On average, you breathe 23,000 times a day.

Breathing generates about 0.6g of CO2 every minute.

On average, people can hold their breath for about one minute. The world record is 21 minutes 29 seconds, 
On average, you speak almost 5,000 words a day – although almost 80% of speaking is self-talk (talking to yourself).

Over the last 150 years the average height of people in industrialized nations increased by 10 cm (4 in).

In the 19th century, American men were the tallest in the world, averaging 1,71 metres (5’6″). Today, the average height for American men is 1,763 m (5 feet 9-and-half inches), compared to 1,815 m (5’10″) for Swedes, and 1,843 m (5’11″) for the Dutch, the tallest Caucasians.

The tallest nation in the world is the Watusis of Burundi: 1.98 m (6 feet 6 inches) tall.

If the amount of water in your body is reduced by just 1%, you’ll feel thirsty.

It is impossible to sneeze and keep one’s eyes open at the same time.

55% of people yawn within 5 minutes of seeing someone else yawn.

Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine, suggested that a woman could enlarge her bust line by singing loudly and often.

A person can live without food for about a month, but only about a week without water.

You’ll drink about 75,000 litres (20,000 gallons) of water in your lifetime.

Hair on the head grows for between two and six years before being replaced. In the case of baldness, the dormant hair was not replaced with new hair.

Men loose about 40 hairs a day. Women loose about 70 hairs a day.

In the Middle Ages the length from the tip of the middle finger to the elbow was called an ell.

A person remains conscious for eight seconds after being decapitated.

The first successful human sex change took place in 1950 when Danish doctor Christian Hamburger operated on New Yorker George Jorgensen, who became Christine Jorgensen.

The muscle that lets your eye blink is the fastest muscle in your body. It allows you to blink 5 times a second.
On average, you blink 15 000 times a day. Women blink twice as much as men.

A typical athlete’s heart churns out 25 to 30 litres (up to 8 gallons) of blood per minute.

We have four basic tastes. The salt and sweet taste buds are at the tip of the tongue, bitter at the base, and sour along the sides.

Not all our taste buds are on our tongue; about 10% are on the palette and the cheeks.
Unless food is mixed with saliva you cannot taste it.

The liver is the largest of the body’s internal organs. The skin is the body’s largest organ.
On average a hiccup lasts 5 minutes.

Fingernails grow nearly 4 times faster than toenails.

Your middle fingernail grows the fastest.

Your finger nails grow at 1 nanometre per second (0.000 000 001 m/s). Your hair grows at 4 nanometres per second (0.000 000 004 m/s).

It takes about 3 months for the transplanted hair to start growing again.

About 13% of people are left-handed. Up from 11% in the past.

In 1900, a person could expect to live to be 47. Today, the average life expectancy for men and women in developed countries is longer than 70 years.

A newborn baby’s head accounts for one-quarter of its weight.

King Henry I, who ruled in the England in the 12th century, standardised the yard as the distance from the thumb of his outstretched arm to his nose.

The bones in your body are not white – they range in colour from beige to light brown. The bones you see in museums are white because they have been boiled and cleaned.

Our eyes are always the same size from birth.

Every person has a unique tongue print.

If all your DNA is stretched out, it would reach to the moon 6,000 times.

Approximately two-thirds of a person’s body weight is water. Blood is 92% water. The brain is 75% water and muscles are 75% water.

The colored part of the eye is called the iris. Behind the iris is the soft, rubbery lens which focuses the light on to a layer, called the retina, in the back of the eye. The retina contains about 125 million rods and 7 million cones. The rods pick up shades of grey and help us see in dim light. The cones work best in bright light to pick up colors.

We actually do not see with our eyes – we see with our brains. The eyes basically are the cameras of the brain.

The size of the sun in comparison


It is the fire of life. It can be kind but it can get angry. But it never throws its weight around. It is the sun. And although it is 330,000 more massive than earth and contains 99.8% of the mass in our solar system, it is small in comparison with some other stars.
The sun never cease to amaze us with its theatrics, its lava flares dancing across its surface in a ballet of nuclear fusion, sometimes leaping millions of miles into the air. And although the sun is big, its intense heat and light makes it difficult to capture good images with normal instruments. So NASA scientists use an Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager and an Atmospheric Imaging Assembly detector to view the ultra-violet (UV) and extreme ultra-violet lithography (EUV) wavelengths released by the sun. The resulting images are spectacular.

Earth in comparison to the sun
Earth’s distance from the sun varies between 91.4 million miles – in January – and 94.4 million miles – in July. The average distance of 92,955,887.6 miles (149, 597, 870.7 kilometers) is called 1 astronomical unit (AU), a measurement that is used to report distances to other planets and stars as well. In short, it’s not a weekend drive.
NASA puts the size of earth to the sun in perspective like this: Suppose the radius of Earth were the width of an ordinary paper clip. The radius of the sun would be roughly the height of a desk, and the sun would be about 100 paces from earth.


The size of the sun in comparison
Our sun is one of billions in the entire universe. It also is fairly small in comparison with other big stars. In fact, our sun is classified as a G2 dwarf star. Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, is twice as massive as the sun and 25 times more luminous. And Sirius is dwarfed by Pollux, which is eight times the radius of the sun. And Pollux is dwarfed by Arcturus, which is almost 26 times the size of the sun.



It’s a big, big universe
But there are bigger stars yet. When compared to Antares, our handsome sun is a mere pixel on a map. And Antares is not even the biggest star. That title is thought to belong to a star called VY Canus Majoris. It is about 2,000 times the size of the sun, or more than twice the size of Antares.


How big is the universe?
The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe calculated the age of the known universe at 13.7 billion years old, based on its radius of 13.7 billion light years. And it is growing bigger every day, at a speed of 71 km/s/Mpc. The size of the whole universe is estimated to be 78 billion light years. If you start traveling today at 60 miles per hour (100km/h) you’ll get to the end of your first coffee stop, the end of one light year, in nine trillion years. Then you just keep going for another 77.999 999 billion light years. Or you could stay here, look after our beautiful planet… and enjoy the sun !!



Human head and brain size

The human head contains 22 bones, consisting the cranium and the facial bones. The cranium is formed by 8 bones: the frontal bone, two parietal bones, two temporal bones, the occipital bone in the back, the ethmoid bone behind the nose, and the sphenoid bone. The face consists of 14 bones including the maxilla (upper jaw) and mandible (lower jaw). (The skull has many little holes in its base which allow the cranial nerves to travel to their destinations.)
The cranium protects the brain, which, for an average adult male weighs about 1400 gram (49 oz). The brain of Russian novelist Turgenev, weighed 2021g (71 oz), Bismarck’s brain weighed 1807g (64 oz), while that of famous French statesman Gambetta was 1294g (46 oz). Female average brain mass is slightly less than that of males. The largest woman’s brain recorded weighed 1742g (61 oz). Einstein’s brain weighed 1230 gram (43.39 ounces), meaning Einstein’s brain was smaller than average.
An elephant’s brain weighs 5000g (176oz or 11 lb), a whale’s 10000g (352oz or 22lb). In proportion to the body, the whale has a much smaller brain than man. This seem to give man the edge, until it was discovered that the dwarf monkey has 1g of brain per 27g (0.95oz) of body, and the capuchin monkey has 1g of brain per 17,5g body, whereas man has 1 gram of brain to 44g of body.

Photographic memory
Most scientists believe that “photographic memory” is a myth. Clever people train their brains to remember well. In fact, as humans we simply do not remember things well. Of the three beings known to be able to recognize themselves in the mirror, the orangutan, the dolphin and the human, only the latter turns around and instantly cannot remember what his/her own face looks like. (Try drawing a picture of yourself without looking in the mirror:)


Brain power
The human brains consists of more than 100 billion neurons (nerve cells) through which the brain’s commands are sent in the form of electric pulses. These pulses travel at more than 400 km/h (250 mph), creating enough electricity to power a light bulb. The brain consumes more energy than any other organ, burning up a whopping 20% of the food we take in.
The left side of your brain controls the right side of your body and the right side of your brain controls the left side of your body.
It is estimated that the mental capacity of a 100-year old human with perfect memory could be represented by computer with 10 to the power of 15 bits (one petabit). At the current rate of computer chip development, that figure can be reached in about 35 years. However, that represents just memory capacity, not the extremely complex processes of thought creation and emotions.

The seeing brain
One-quarter of the brains in used to control the eye. We actually see with our brains, with the eyes basically being cameras.
You’re born with 300 bones, but when you get to be an adult, you only have 206.

But consider this: for all the complexity of the brain, you still have only one thought at a time. Make it a positive thought.