The Strangest Planet

Why isn't Pluto a planet anymore? When we ask a question of what is and isn't a planet, we are really just talking about how we define the word 'Planet'. In ancient times, humans didn't really need a definition. Astronomers know 5 star like objects, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. They didn't really move around like the other stars, they just thought it just wondered through the sky. The word planet comes from an ancient Greek word that meant 'Wonderer'. Eventually astronomers found out that Earth is a planet too, orbiting around the Sun just like the others. Thats pretty much it for the Solar System until the age of Telescopes.

The next planet to be discovered it Uranus in 1781 followed by Neptune in 1846. These planets are huge but not as huge as Jupiter and Saturn. They are just too far away for ancient astronomers to see. In 1801, an astronomer discovered another planet, or so he thought. The astronomer found a spherical object about 600 miles across in between Mars and Jupiter. The planet which is smaller than our moon is called Ceres. In this case, it was not too distant to see but just too small. The problem however is that Ceres had so called 'buddies', lots of them. The next year a slightly smaller object was discovered called Pallas and two years after that another one named Juno. Now they know about thousands of these similar rocky planets. Instead of adding thousands of planets into our Solar System, astronomers decided it makes more sense to group these objects together and named them Asteroids and thats how we have the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Now we reached to Pluto, which by far to me is the strangest planet. An astronomer discovered Pluto in 1930. But since then, its status as a planet has been called into question. First of all, Pluto's orbit is strange. You can see it on the last picture below. It is outside the Kuiper Belt and even intersecting the orbit of Neptune. Also, it turns out that Pluto is not as big as astronomers really thought. Instead, it has got a huge moon near it and thats why some people call it a binary planet or a double planet. And, just like Ceres, astronomers discovered that Pluto is not alone. Beginning in the early 1990's, they started finding other objects similar to Pluto. Some like Quaoar and Sedna are almost as big. Then in 2005, astronomers announced that they found an object named Eris, even bigger than Pluto.

So, are all these planets? Astronomers wondered the same thing. In August 2006, astronomers from all over the world met and finally decided on a formal definition of a planet. Pluto and its so called 'buddies' did not make the cut and now they are known as Dwarf Planets. So this is why Pluto is the strangest planet to me, it is the only planet in history to be knows as both a planet and a dwarf planet in the solar system.

30 Hornets vs 30, 000 Bees!!!

Would u expect to win in a fight with 30 hornets or 30, 000 honey bees? Imagine your cute honey bees happily building your hive with 30, 000 members of your family. Then, 30 giant hornets come out of nowhere, they are 2 inches long and their venom is so strong that it could kill a human being within minutes! They take the lives of dozens of people every year.

In just half an hour, those hornets can murder every member of the bee's family ripping them limb by limb. So that is 30 hornets can kill 30, 000 bees in 30 minutes! That is just sick! Now Japanese honey bees are not a bit like the normal honey bees we see everyday.

That hornet is a scout whose job is to mark the hive. So its attack force will come to murder all of the bees eating their larvae and honey. Instead of panicking, the Japanese honey bees signal their strategy by shaking their 'butt'. Yea, I know, its weird but they do so. They hold off to the last possible moment and then they attack the hornets. Each hornet is attacked by hundreds of bees. But instead of stinging the hornets, they start 'vibrating'. Now this is beyond weird. But the reason they do that is to raise their collective body temperature to 47 degrees Celcius.

Now why do they raise their temperature to 47 degrees u ask? Well, honey bees can stand the maximum temperature of 48 degrees but the hornets can only stand the maximum temperature of 45-46 degrees! One degree Celcius makes a lot of difference and those poor hornets that is surrounded by hundreds of bees is cooked alive. And with the hornet, the secret location of the hive dies with it. Here is a picture of the bees so called 'vibrating' the hornets. Thank you for reading, if you found this article is interesting, follow me for more interesting articles in the future =)

Why Carbonated Drinks are called 'Soft Drinks'

Today I found out why flavored carbonated beverages are called 'soft drinks'. *trying new font*

It turns out, soft drinks aren’t just flavored carbonated beverages. 'Soft Drink' refers to nearly all beverages that do not contain significant amounts of alcohol (hard drinks).

The term 'soft drink' though is now typically used exclusively for flavored carbonated beverages. This is actually due to advertising. Flavored carbonated beverage makers were having a hard time creating national advertisements due to the fact that what you call their product varies from place to place. For instance, in parts of the United States and Canada, flavored carbonated beverages are referred to as 'pop' in other parts 'soda' in yet other parts 'coke' and there are a variety of other names commonly used as well. Then if we go international with the advertisements, in England these drinks are called 'fizzy drinks' in Ireland sometimes just 'minerals'. Weirrrrrd...

To account for the fact that they can’t refer to their product in the generic sense on national advertisements, because of these varied terms, these manufactures have chosen the term 'soft drink' to be more or less a universal term for flavored carbonated beverages.

Interestingly, according to a study done in 2006, most carbonated 'soft' drinks actually do contain a little alcohol. In older methods of introducing the CO2 to the drink, this was resulting from natural fermentation, similar to hw most beer gets its alcohol. However, with modern methods of introducing CO2 to the drink, this is not an issue. Yet measurable amounts of alcohol remain. This is due to the fermentation of sugars in the non-sterile environment of the drink. In some types of soda-pop, additional alcohol is also introduced due to the fact that alcohol is used in the preparation of some of the flavor extracts. However, before anyone starts campaigning to make soda-pop illegal for kids due to the alcohol content, it should be noted that a typical container of yogurt of similar volume to some amount of soda-pop, will contain about 2 times the amount of alcohol over the amount in the soda-pop. In conclusion, think before you drink =)