60 mind-blowing science facts about our incredible world

The world is a mysterious place, which gives Live Science plenty of material for our popular Life's Little Mysteries series that runs every weekend. We've been writing mysteries since 2004, and we still haven't run out of weird things to cover. Each mystery comes with a multitude of facts, like which animals are evolving the fastest and why Australia has so many venomous animals. Honestly, we could go on, but we'd have to link to our thousands of mysteries. So, for your geeking-out pleasure, we've pulled out 60 of the most impressive facts here.

60. The oldest river in the world is Australia's Finke River, which formed between 300 million and 400 million years ago

59. Emeralds are rarer than diamonds, at least when it comes to what's inside the world's known mines.

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58. You usually don't see your nose because your brain cancels it out.

57. The oldest known boat is 10,000 years old, but humans probably invented watercraft by at least 60,000 years ago on the journey to Australia.

56. Stomach acid can burn through metal, but it doesn't burn through our bodies because of a thick, sticky layer of mucus in the stomach that's alkaline and buffers the acid.

55. Cat paw pads, also known as toe beans, are so good at cushioning falls, scientists studied them to create better footwear for paratroopers.

54. Earth will likely last a total of 9.5 billion years, but most planets orbit red dwarf stars, meaning they'll last much longer — possibly up to trillions of years.

53. The largest possible earthquake is most likely around 9.5 magnitude, but there's a very slight chance one could be bigger.

52. Rainbows are not really arches; they're circles. You can see the full circle from a high vantage point, such as an airplane or a mountaintop

51. It's natural for deserts to form next to oceans, and this can make deserts very foggy.

50. Until the 1960s, researchers thought people largely dreamed in black and white.

49. Pumpkins are a type of berry (and a very big one).

48. Evacuating your bowels stimulates the vagus nerve, which can lower your blood pressure and heart rate — no wonder it feels so good to poop.

47. Iceland used to be the only country in the world without mosquitoes, but that changed in October 2025.

46. If a human could fly with wings, they would need to have a wingspan of about 20 feet (6 m) to have any chance of gliding through the air.

45. Leaving the pit in doesn't technically delay the browning process of an entire avocado; it just prevents oxygen from browning the bit underneath it.

44. At about 1,300 feet (400 m) below sea level, the banks of the Dead Sea are Earth's lowest point on dry land.

43. During the adolescent growth spurt, some teenagers can grow as much as 4 to 5 inches (10 to 13 centimeters) in a single year.

42. Black holes are dark because they trap light that crosses the event horizon, which means if you were to enter one, it would actually be extremely bright.

41. Your brain can take 15 to 30 minutes to reach full cognitive capacity after you wake up, a period known as "sleep inertia."

40. When sea levels were lower during the last ice age, North America and Asia were joined by an enormous land bridge. A similar bridge enabled the ancestors of Tyrannosaurus rex to trek from Asia to North America around 68 million years ago.

39. The slowest-moving land animal is likely the banana slug, which moves at the extremely leisurely pace of 0.006 mph (0.0096 km/h), or a tenth of an inch per second (2.7 millimeters per second). By comparison, the common garden snail glides along at a relatively speedy 0.03 mph (0.048 km/h), or half an inch per second (1.3 centimeters per second).

38. Although rare, in certain circumstances, women were allowed to compete as gladiators in ancient Rome, but there are no records of any of them dying in battle.

37. The sound of the supermassive black holes in the Perseus cluster burping out gas would hit a low B flat, some 57 octaves below middle C.

36. All newts are salamanders, but not all salamanders are newts.

35. Even though the Colorado River toad releases the chemical 5-MeO-DMT — one of the most potent psychedelics around — from poison glands in its head, you can't get high by licking it.

34. The 1883 eruption of Krakatau is often considered the loudest sound in history, with people 1,900 miles (3,000 kilometers) away hearing the blast.

33. The oldest known human in the genus Homo lived in Africa around 2.8 million years ago, but we're not sure which species it is.

32. The largest known prime number contains 41,024,320 digits.

31. Frogs breathe and drink through their skin.

30. A bullet fired from a 223 Remington leaves the weapon at up to 2,727 mph (4,390 km/h) — fast enough to cover 11 football fields in a single second.

29. A turtle's shell is made of 50 bones.

28. Despite what you may have seen in the movies, ancient Egyptians did not booby-trap the pyramids.

27. The world's longest undersea section of a tunnel belongs to the Channel Tunnel, which has a 23.5-mile (37.9 kilometers) underwater section connecting England and France.

26. Despite evidence to the contrary, Christopher Columbus continued to claim the lands he "discovered" were parts of Asia, likely so he'd get paid.

25. The primary mirror on the James Webb Space Telescope is 21.3 feet (6.5 meters) in diameter, giving it a total collecting area of more than 270 square feet (25 square m).

24. As of March 2025, there were 953 known natural satellites in the solar system (depending on your definition of a moon).

23. There are roughly 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms in the observable universe.

22. It takes five to 10 years for a body in a coffin to completely decompose down to a skeleton.

21. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is a web of ocean currents that loop through the Atlantic Ocean, moving 600 million cubic feet (17 million cubic meters) of water per second and 1.2 petawatts of heat — roughly the same amount of heat put out by a million power plants running at the same time.

20. The deepest place on Earth is the bottom of the Mariana Trench, which lies about 35,876 feet (10,935 meters) below the surface. That makes it about 7,000 feet (2,100 m) deeper than Mount Everest is tall.

19. Researchers have shown that octopuses can be fooled by a version of the "rubber hand illusion," by stroking a real octopus arm hidden from view and a visible fake octopus arm at the same time. When the fake arm was pinched, the octopus reacted as if its own arm had been attacked — by changing color or pulling back.

18. The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs hit Earth at 27,000 mph (43,000 km/h).

17. Roughly half of all eukaryotic species on Earth are insects.

16. Mount Everest is only the tallest mountain by altitude, at 29,031.69 feet (8,848.86 m) above sea level. If you measure Mauna Kea, an inactive volcano in Hawaii, from base to peak, it's actually taller, at 33,497 feet (10,211 m) in altitude.

15. You're more likely to cry when chopping an onion with a dull knife than with a sharp one.

14. Antarctica became a continent around 34 million years ago, after losing its land connections with Australia and South America.

13. Jellyfish, sea anemones and hydras don't have brains, yet they're capable of surprisingly advanced behavior.

12. Kangaroos have three vaginas.

11. Many shark species will become temporarily paralyzed if you turn them upside down.

10. The human heart has incredible stamina, beating around 100,000 times and pumping roughly 2,500 gallons (9,500 liters) of blood daily, on average.

9. Dragonflies are one of nature's most effective hunters, catching prey up to 97% of the time. By comparison, tigers have a success rate of only 10%.

8. Yes, some figs really do have wasps in them.

7. Training OpenAI's GPT-4 used an estimated 50 gigawatt-hours of energy — enough to power San Francisco for three days.

6. The oldest DNA sequenced from animals and plants is from 2.4 million years ago.

5. On average, a person produces about 30 to 91 cubic inches (500 to 1,500 cubic centimeters) of gas every day, regardless of their diet. Thankfully, over 99% of those gases are odorless.

4. A female puff adder holds the record for the most offspring born in one live-birth pregnancy — a whopping 156 fully developed snakelets.

3. The record for the most times a piece of paper has been folded in half is 12. If you were to fold it 42 times, it would be more than 273,280 miles (439,800 kilometers) high — more than the average distance between Earth and the moon.

2. It is possible to turn a different element into gold, just not a lot of it.

1. The most-cited number of organs in the human body is 78, and the heaviest organ is the skin.

Looking for more mysteries?

Here are some more incredible stories from Life's Little Mysteries:

—Do humans and chimps really share nearly 99% of their DNA?

—Why do European cities have milder winters than those in North America, despite being at the same latitude?

—Why does boiling water have bubbles, except in a microwave?

Editor's Note: This article was originally published on Jan. 4, 2026, and was updated on Feb. 27 to include more mysteries.