One of the most daunting but beautiful facts of life is that no matter how long we live, we’ll never run out of new things to learn about the world around us.
Part of this has to do with the fact that it’s still so full of mysteries we have yet to discover, but also because both the world itself and the people who live in it are always changing. And those changes tend to not only teach us about the world to come, but also about what was already happening.
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And, while what we learn about the realities of the world can be harsh and unpleasant at times, much of it is fascinating in a more satisfying way.
We might know that Pluto is significantly smaller than earth, but it’s still staggering to see how small it actually is.
According to NASA , it has a diameter of just over 1,400 miles, which does indeed mean that it could theoretically fit inside of Australia.
And considering that Australia is the world’s smallest continent, that says a lot.
Although this image’s uploader thought the wear and tear on this seat revealed its original design, the truth is a little more complicated.
What we’re actually seeing here is called a substrate , or a layer of fibers that exist underneath the ones we see that help with coloration design and how the seat reacts to water.
So while this might work as a design on its own, it’s here to support the look the manufacturers went with.
This flower is known as an Asian pigeonwings and it’s a popular additive in food and drinks for a special reason.
When you mix them in with a liquid, it’ll start to take on either the vibrant blue you see here or a deep purple.
And if you add some lemon or something with a similar acidity, the mixture will actually change color.
We know that fireflies and certain mushrooms and jellyfish are bioluminescent, but a certain type of squid can make dazzling light shows when they gather as well.
As the BBC reported, these are known as firefly squid and they’re known to spend their nights on the surface of Toyama Bay in Japan to look for mates.
As you can see, that search makes for quite a spectacle.
This is the Andean Condor and it’s the largest bird in the world that’s capable of flight.
According to National Geographic , however, they’re heavy enough to pose some issues with keeping aloft even with 10-foot wingspans.
For this reason, they live in either mountainous or coastal regions known for their heavy winds so they can glide on air currents and expend as little effort as possible.
As this letter from 1940 confirms, this one sports editor’s suggestion is the reason why the Pittsburgh Steelers have the name they do today.
As we can see here, the football team was once known as the Pittsburgh Pirates before holding a contest to change their name.
So, thanks to this man (who happens to be the uploader’s great-uncle), Pittsburgh sports fans haven’t worried about confusing them with the local baseball team for the last 80 years.
It may look like this polar bear’s face is partially frozen, but things aren’t quite that uncomfortable for it.
While these Arctic waters are undoubtedly cold, we’re simply looking at what happens when a bear blows bubbles underwater there.
When this person had a look at the boards on their porch one day, they found this odd sap running across it.
While it remains a mystery as to how exactly this happened, the fact that sap stains on wood planks are usually the result of fungi growing either on or inside of the wood seems like an important clue here.
Believe it or not, we’re looking at a field of Christmas trees in this photo.
You can see some elements of the trees we’re used to if you look closely, but anything that seems out of place is simply what tends to get sheared off before the trees are sold.
It’s pretty rare to see a snake that’s either two-headed or albino, so it’s especially rare to see one with both traits.
And yet, that’s exactly what we’re looking at here. And while both conditions present some big problems in the wild, it’s apparently not unheard of for two-headed snakes to survive in captivity for up to 20 years.
So we might be able to enjoy the fact that this snake exists for some time.
During the late 19th century, there was an electric railway that actually ran on the waters near Brighton.
Although the original trolley broke loose and fell into the sea, the railway nonetheless proved popular due to the way passengers could experience the sea without the sickness that often comes with that.
However, it was found to get in the way of Britain’s maritime defenses by the turn of the century and was quickly shut down.
There’s a reason why this goat has tennis balls on its horns.
When a farmer’s goats get unruly, it’s apparently common practice to put pool noodles on their horns so they can’t actually hurt each other when they fight.
Whoever cares for this goat has obviously opted for tennis balls instead, but it’s unclear whether either option works better than the other.
Mars may be a planet that inspires a lot of fascination from us, but our planet definitely has better sunsets.
Although we understand our neighbor to be a very dusty planet in the abstract, that fact definitely becomes clear when we see how drab and brownish-gray the sunsets are over there.
Although fiber optic cables are often installed underground, it seems that isn’t always the preferred option.
For that reason, this robot can be deployed to lay them around existing power lines as it scoots along the wires.
The uploader’s sister apparently found 777 shark teeth at South Carolina’s Myrtle Beach in a matter of two weeks.
While it’s unknown why so many end up on the shore there, the Florida Museum confirmed that their black coloration likely means these teeth have fossilized.
So, however they came to be here, it clearly happened a long time ago.
Speaking of shark fossils, this possible candidate for a megalodon tooth could make history for the Scottish town it was discovered in.
While it wouldn’t be the first Megalodon tooth discovered since the massive creature died out at least 2.6 million years ago, it may be the first one discovered in the U.K. if the uploader’s contact at the University of Edinburgh is correct about this discovery.
You may be aware that so many bombs fell on Germany during World War II that they’re still finding them today.
But while it may seem like this one happened to go off during a construction project, that is actually what one looks like during a controlled demolition.
If it seems like this lizard is walking on water, your eyes don’t deceive you.
In fact, many small animals are able to walk on water by taking advantage of the way water molecules bond together to create surface tension .
If a photographer is fast enough, they may catch a bizarre bubble effect as a swimmer breaks through this tension, but that takes a certain weight threshold.
Glenn Suter of Australia isn’t lying when he claims to have the world’s fastest couch.
The speed he claims here (the equivalent of 101 miles per hour) has indeed been confirmed by the Guinness World Records committee, which officially makes him the record holder.
And considering that Edd China of the U.K. has a couch with a top speed of 87 miles per hour, it’s not as if Suter earned this record unopposed.
We’ve clearly come a long way since the 1930s.
In the days before passenger flights came equipped with secured seats that also act as flotation devices, they simply made do with a series of bolted-down wicker chairs.
They couldn’t exactly call it the safest way to travel back then.
When the sun hits them right, it suddenly becomes clear just how many blood vessels there are in a cat’s ear.
And this fact has the unfortunate side effect of making the ear the most common place for a cat to experience hematoma .
After all, the more blood vessels there are in one place, the more there are to rupture when a cat gets hurt.
This diorama at the Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima, Japan shows how terrifying and unprecented the atomic bomb would have been to witness at the time.
That suspended red ball indicates both where the bomb exploded and how large the blast had already become less than a second after it happened.
Despite how it may appear here, a hummingbird’s wings are not actually blue.
They’re actually clear, but they also have a way of refracting any light that passes through them to such a degree that they can display any number of colors.
And when that light reflects on ice crystals of sufficient size in the atmosphere, some amazing things can happen.
In this case, we’re seeing a beautiful display of light pillars over Alaska that look like a fleet of alien spaceships are beaming people up.
Here we see the USS Annapolis submarine after it surfaced through three feet of ice.
If that seems like a risky move, it might help to learn that it wasn’t the result of a blind ascent.
According to the University of Minnesota , one of the functions that a sonar can have is to measure the thickness of ice.
When we see graffiti on the sides of bridges, we may wonder how street artists manage to put it there.
And as we can see from this harrowing picture, the answer is sheer fearlessness.
The ledge at the bottom of this bridge is so narrow that we can’t even see it from far enough away, but it’s apparently sufficient.
Although you might have noticed that this is often how heavenly light is depicted in paintings, it’s also possible to experience it in real life.
That’s because this is apparently what a sunset looks like when you’re traveling above the clouds. And we thought they were stunning from the ground.
I guess it’s good that somebody found this out for us because it looks like their discovery gave them an unpleasant mess.
For those wondering what we’re looking at, it turns out that when you leave coffee lying around for four months, it ends up looking like a mac n’ cheese Snocone.
It obviously shouldn’t be tasted, though.
If this X-ray seems a little odd, that’s because this hand was dipped in iodine first.
Iodine apparently absorbs X-rays, which means that more of the skin around the bones was visible than usual.
This crocodile is white due to a condition called hypo-melanism.
That means some genetic factor along the way led it to produce far less of the melanin pigment than usual.
Although it’s apparently not uncommon for crocodiles to turn out like this, it’s much rarer for them to grow into adulthood as the pale skin makes them easy prey.
