Greatest 101 questions of all time The '101 greatest questions of all time' have been answered in a BBC

magazine.
-Where is the safest place to stand outside in a thunderstorm? Tall, pointy objects standing alone in an open space are more likely to get struck by lightning but its by no means a certainty. Sometimes the flat ground next to a tall tree can be hit. A car or other enclosed metal structure is the safest place to be in a thunderstorm. Failing that, a ditch, trench or group of shrubs of uniform height is better than nothing. Keep away from boundary areas between dissimilar terrain (water and land; rock and earth; trees and fields). Also keep at least five metres away from metal objects or other people as lightning will often jump from one object to another. Why do identical twins have different fingerprints? Although identical twins share the same DNA, they dont look identical cell-for-cell, because not every aspect of your physical appearance is rigidly determined by your genes. Fingerprints are formed semi-randomly as the foetus develops in the womb andare affected by such things as chance fluctuations of hormone levels. Similarly, the pattern of freckles and moles on the skin is caused by random mutations and will vary between identical twins. Is the human race still getting taller? The average height, at least in Western society, is increasing because of better childhood nutrition and sexual selection. But the tendency of women to find men taller than six feet (183cm) more attractive cant be extrapolated upward, and people above 6ft 2in (188cm) are much more likely to suffer back problems. Above 6ft 8in (203cm), and the heart strains to pump blood round the body. Why do I feel cold and shiver when I have a fever? A fever is when your body increases its internal thermostat, found in the hypothalamus. If you exercise hard or its a hot day, your body temperature might increase, but the thermostat remains at around 36.8C. When you feel hot the hypothalamus tries to correct this with sweating and increased blood flow to the skin. But with a fever, it is the thermostat that has risen. This means your body temperature is now below 36.8C, so you feel cold and shiver, to try and raise your temperature. The higher body temperature may help fight infection by speeding white blood cell production and slowing bacteria reproduction. What is OK short for?

The most popular theory is that OK comes from oll korrect, a deliberately misspelled writing of all correct. It was popularised in Boston newspapers around the 1840s when it was fashionable to go around spelling things incorrectly for humorous effect. Legend also has it that New York Democrats later adopted the abbreviation to promote their candidate Martin Van Buren the initials OK were derived from his nickname, Old Kinderhook. Why cant we just fill in the ozone hole with man-made ozone? The sheer scale of the notorious hole or, more accurately, depleted region in the Earths ozone layer over the Antarctic beggars belief. At its peak each September, it spans an area bigger than the continental United States, and tens of millions of tonnes of ozone would be needed to fill it up again. Simply creating that amount of ozone, let alone getting it where its needed, would be astronomically expensive. Why do fingers and toes wrinkle when left in water? The waterproof coating on our skin gets rubbed away from areas of our bodies like our hands and feet that are frequently in contact with objects. If you immerse yourself in water with a lower concentration of dissolved salts than that of your cell contents, water will be absorbed by osmosis and cause your skin cells to swell. Since they are anchored to the tissues below, they are forced to corrugate to accommodate this. What is a hiccup? A hiccup comes from an involuntary contraction of the diaphragm, producing asudden intake of air. The glottis (the vocal apparatus of the larynx) slams shut at the same time, so that the column of air strikes the closed glottis to produce the characteristic, onomatopoeic noise. Is there an easy way to prove the Earth is round? Yes, travel. Because the Earths surface is curved, youll notice that different constellations of stars are revealed. Can you have a fish out of water? Yes. Several species of fish can breathe air and crawl on land. There are about 50 species of flying fish, too. Why is sea air good for you? It isn't, particularly. In Victorian England, seaside resorts got a reputation for having healthy air maybe in comparison to the era's city smogs. The seaside's "bracing" smell is caused by a chemical produced by coastal bacteria, present in very low concentrations. But a study last year found that sea salt can react with chemicals in marine exhaust fumes to worsen the atmospheric pollution in a busy port.

Do plants die of old age? Given good conditions, some plants can live for ever. It takes a change in external conditions to finish them off. But annuals die soon after seeding. Does chewing gum really stay inside you for years? No. Chewing gum is indigestible but it doesn't have any magic property that allows it to escape the normal digestive transit. Three days is the usual limit. Where do phobias come from? Around 10 per cent of the population suffer from phobias. Some may be triggered by a traumatic event while others are linked to physical problems. Studies suggest that simple phobias are partly genetic while others may be due to cultural history. For example, a fear of spiders may be passed down from the Middle Ages when spiders were associated with the plague, as victims' deserted homes became shrouded in cobwebs. Do men have cellulite? Yes. It's not just women who are cursed with orange peel skin, although in men cellulite tends to be in different places, usually around the neck and abdomen. Can germs catch germs? Yes. The germ would be an even smaller organism that attacks its host germ from within. Why do I get more car sick in the back? It's probably because you don't have such a good view of the horizon. Motion sickness occurs when the balance mechanism in your ear registers movement while your eyes are telling you that you are stationary. Could we live on water and supplements? No. As well as vitamins and minerals we need carbohydrates, fats and proteins for energy and cell repair. Do hot drinks cool you down? Yes. They make your body think you are hotter than you really are so you sweat more and that leads to heat loss. What would happen if there were no Moon?

The most immediate effect (other than the lack of moonlight, of course) would be on the Earths tides. With only the Suns gravitational influence, the difference between high and low tides would be reduced dramatically - as would tidal drag, which slows the Earth down at a rate adding about 0.002 seconds to the length of a day each century. Long term, the effects would be far more serious. The climate of the Earth is sensitively dependent on the 23.5 tilt of the Earths axis, and without the stabilising presence of our relatively huge Moon, the gravity of the other planets would produce big changes in this angle - as it does with Mars, whose tilt changes by 60 over a few million years. Could I be allergic to water? No. Allergies to a substance result when immune system antibodies attack it. But no antibodies exist that bind to water.

How is bullet-proof glass made? It might be better to call it bullet-resistant glass, because it resists penetration, although a series of bullets fired at the same place will eventually break through. It is usually made by sandwiching a layer of deformable polycarbonate plastic between glass layers. The bullets impact shatters the outer layer of glass, spreading the energy over a wide area so the plastic layer gives, but does not rupture. How do seeds know which way to grow? All plants can sense the direction of the gravitational field and orientate themselves accordingly. This is called geotaxis. In mature plants, phototaxis (growing towards the light source) overrides the gravitational impulse for the stalk and leaves, but the roots and the seed while it is underground rely on gravity for orientation. Why are sumo-wrestlers so fat? Its to do with Newtons second law of motion, which can be written as acceleration = force/mass. The heavier you are, the more force an opponent has to exert to get you moving and push you out of the ring, or to lift and throw you. The heaviest wrestler weighed 267kg, which no weightlifter has ever lifted. How does Blu-tack stick, but not feel sticky? Blu-tack uses a so-called electrostatic interaction, forming a chemical bond between itself and whatever its sticking to. Its made up of very small molecules and, over time, seeps into microscopic indents in the surface of materials. The electrostatic interaction gradually gives way to that molecular seeping. Hence Blu-tack doesnt feel sticky initially, but gets stickier if you handle it long enough.

Why do old men go bald, but get hairy nostrils? Male pattern baldness is caused by the hormone DHT or dihydro-testosterone. This has many other effects on the body and it is thought to inhibit hair loss in the nostrils so that each shaft has a longer growing phase. But the exact mechanism is still not well understood. What is the Universe made of? This is one of the biggest mysteries facing 21st-century science. Recent studies of the heat left over from the Big Bang have revealed that conventional matter made from atoms accounts for just a few per cent of the matter in the Universe. Most of it is in the form of so-called cold dark matter (CDM), whose enigmatic name reflects the awkward fact that astronomers dont know what it is. Why does breathing pure oxygen kill you? Our blood has evolved to capture the oxygen we breathe in and bind it safely to the transport molecule called haemoglobin. If you breathe air with a much higher than normal O2 concentration, the oxygen in the lungs overwhelms the bloods ability to carry it away. The result is that free oxygen binds to the surface proteins of the lungs, interferes with the operation of the central nervous system and also attacks the retina. Will my eyes pop out if I dont close them when I sneeze? No, for a whole variety of reasons, including the fact that the air spaces in the nose and throat involved in sneezing arent directly connected to anything behind the eye. That means they cant create the pressure to push your eyeballs forward. If humans died out, would we evolve again from apes? Maybe, if we were wiped out by a species-specific plague, its possible that another ape species might go on to evolve greater intelligence and develop a fully bipedal gait. Do any wasps make honey? No. Adult wasps drink nectar from flowers but dont turn it into honey. They feed their young by laying eggs inside prey. What makes me feel hungry? The vagus nerve sends information about the fullness of the stomach to the hypothalamus in the brain. Hunger is also controlled by hormones, including insulin, leptin, ghrelin and cholecystokinin. Levels of these change according to the levels of various nutrients in the blood and digestive tract. How does Viagra work?

Viagra is the brand name for sildenafil citrate, a drug that was originally studied for use in patients with high blood pressure or heart disease. It works by blocking the action of an enzyme called PDE5. The role of this enzyme is to break down another enzyme called cGMP, which relaxes the smooth muscle of the corpus cavernosa (a mass of erectile tissue in the penis), which allows them to become filled with blood and therefore create an erection. When the sildenafil citrate blocks the PDE5, the cGMP levels continue to build so long as the man remains sexually aroused and thus the corpus cavernosa are inflated with blood to a much higher pressure than they would otherwise be. Smooth muscle relaxants have been used to create spontaneous erection as early as the 1980s. But what makes Viagra special is that it acts only when the man is aroused, and only on the penis. This is because the PDE5 enzyme is specific to the penis. Why are flies attracted to bad smells? The smells that are a warning of putrefaction to us are attractive to flies for just the same reason. When organic matter (animal or vegetable) starts to rot, it becomes soft and moist, and provides ideal breeding conditions for fly larvae. Female flies are attracted to rotting material, where they lay their eggs in batches (around 50 to 100 in the case of the house fly). The eggs can hatch within 12 hours, and the larvae burrow into the soft material and feed for several days before turning into pupae, which then produce adult flies. It can all take as little as 10 days from egg to adult. LF After bumping my head, why do I see stars? The stars you see are actually neurons in your visual cortex firing spontaneously. This occurs when their oxygenation level changes abruptly either because you have stood up too quickly or because your brain has been suddenly accelerated by a sharp blow, sloshing blood into or out of the capillaries. The neurons closest to capillaries are affected first and, if it happens fast enough, they fire well before the surrounding neurons. This results in isolated signals that your brain interprets as lights. Why dont birds get electrocuted while perching on power lines? Its not voltages per se that kill, but voltage differences, which are needed for electricity to flow. If a bird lands on a single power line at, say 35,000 volts, the lack of a voltage difference keeps it safe. If it extends its wings and touches another power line at a different voltage, though, it will be electrocuted. Thats why electricity companies put plenty of space between cables. Why does sunshine make me happy? Theres a fine balancing act in the brain and circulatory system that regulates our moods, boosting the feel-good factor or sometimes causing Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) in winter. The hormone melatonin, produced by the pineal gland in the brain, regulates our sleep/wake cycle, but excessive levels can cause depression. The action of light on our face suppresses melatonin synthesis, therefore boosting your overall mood. Evolutionary principles could apply too. There are plenty of nocturnal primates and presumably they arent always

depressed. It seems likely that we have evolved to prefer light to darkness because humans are active during the day. Is eating Red grapes as good for you as drinking red wine? No. The benefits of red wine are largely down to flavonoids, which are twice as concentrated in wine as in grape juice. Is iron in our blood influenced by strong magnetic fields? Yes, but very weakly. Random thermal movements stop haemoglobin molecules from forming stable magnetic dipoles. I have some family photos that are 100 years old. Will my digital snaps last as long? Yes, if you print them out or store them on CD-Rs shielded against light damage. Is the exterior of a soap bar always clean? No. After use, soap has a film of water, soap and dirt left on its surface that dries out to leave the dirt stuck to the soap. If you throw water in the air in the Russian winter, will it come back down as ice? Yes. A cloud of water droplets at -30C will fall to the ground as particles of ice. What is pins and needles? This is a form of paresthesia that is similar to, but milder than the feeling of a limb going to sleep. It can be caused by poor blood circulation but in healthy individuals it is more normally caused by compressing the nerves that run past the elbows or knees. This interrupts communication with the sensory nerve endings in the hands and feet and when the pressure is released the nerves suddenly begin firing wildly and randomly until a sensory threshold is reestablished. It is normally very transient but certain medical disorders such as diabetes or hypothyroidism can cause chronic pins and needles. Why do onions make you cry? The action of cutting an onion releases a fine spray of droplets. Recent Japanese research has shown that these droplets contain an enzyme called lachrymatoryfactor synthase and sulphurcontaining compounds, which react to produce a powerful irritant called Syn-propanethial- Soxide. When a droplet strikes your eye, you respond by producing a copious flow of tears to try and wash the irritant away. What happens to cells in our bodies when they die?

Cells on the surface of our bodies or in the lining of our gut are sloughed off and discarded. Those inside our bodies are scavenged by phagocytes white blood cells that ingest other cells. The energy from the dead cells is partly recycled to make other white cells. Do left-handed people think more laterally? No, there are no studies to suggest the creative ability to see unusual or surprising solutions to problems varies between left- and right-handers Can we correct colour blindness? No, colour blindness is caused by an inherited defect in the genes that code for the coloursensitive proteins in the eye. Do any stars escape from their galaxies and roam through the Universe? Yes, a star can end up hurled out of a galaxy after approaching a black hole on a trajectory that accelerates it above the galaxys escape velocity. Does the size of your head affect your IQ? No, a 1998 study concluded that there is a correlation between head size and brain size, but that IQ was not related to size, at least not in young, healthy adults. Can the government track you if you have a GPS-enabled mobile phone? Yes, if your phone has GPS, your location could be relayed to an operator, but youd have to be on the phone to them. How are birds feathers waterproofed? Birds pick up oil on their beaks, by rubbing against the uropygial or preen gland near the tail, and then rub it over their feathers. This coating insulates the interlocking barbules in the feather. As water cannot penetrate through the oil coating, the feather is waterproof. LV Why are lobsters cooked alive and do they feel pain? Lobsters and other shellfish have harmful bacteria naturally present in their flesh. Once the lobster is dead, these bacteria can rapidly multiply and release toxins that may not be destroyed by cooking. You therefore minimise the chance of food poisoning by cooking the lobster alive. Thats great for us but what about the lobster? It has been argued that lobsters do not possess a true brain and so cant feel pain. It is fair to say that they are not self-aware in the same way that we are, but they do react to tissue damage both physically and hormonally, so they are obviously capable of detecting pain on some level. In fact, the hormone that they release into the bloodstream, cortisol, is the same one that humans produce when hurt. But the most visible sign of distress is the twitching tail, which evolved as an escape reflex. Researchers at the University

of Maine found that putting the lobster on ice for 15 minutes before dropping it into boiling water produced the shortest tail-twitching interval (20 seconds). Contrary to the popular urban myth though, placing the lobster in cold water that is then slowly brought to the boil does not anaesthetise the animal and appears to extend its suffering. Why dont spiders get stuck in their own webs? A spiders web is built like a bicycle wheel, with an outer rim and spokes running to the centre, and then a spiral from the centre back out to the rim. The spiral is the only bit that is coated with glue the spokes and outer rim are made from dry silk. The spider mostly avoids the sticky sections as it moves and it has very minimal contact with the web, in any case. On top of this, spiders constantly groom their legs to keep them clear of silk and glue. How high must you sing to shatter a wine glass? The note that a wine glass makes when you hit it is its resonant frequency the frequency at which the glass vibrates most efficiently. If you can match this tone you can smash the glass. The note will be around one octave above middle C, depending on the size of the glass. The real trick is singing loudly enough. Even with expensive,glasses, which vibrate with a clear tone that doesnt damp down quickly, the amplitude required is at the limit for the human voice. An untrained singer can do it relatively easily with good amplification but achieving the same thing without a speaker has only been done once on TV, by singer and voice coach Jaime Vendera for the Discovery Channels Mythbusters show. What would happen if there were no Moon? The most immediate effect (other than the lack of moonlight, of course) would be on the Earths tides. With only the Suns gravitational influence, the difference between high and low tides would be reduced dramatically as would tidal drag, which slows the Earth down at a rate adding about 0.002 seconds to the length of a day each century. Long term, the effects would be far more serious. The climate of the Earth is sensitively dependent on the 23.5 tilt of the Earths axis, and without the stabilising presence of our relatively huge Moon, the gravity of the other planets would produce big changes in this angle as it does with Mars, whose tilt changes by 60 over a few million years. Why do drugs have a shelf-life? Cynics argue that shelflives are just invented by pharmaceutical companies to make us buy fresh batches of perfectly good drugs. In reality, government regulators demand extensive testing to find out how long the compounds retain their potency. When theyre kept at room temperature, the molecules that make up the drugs degrade just like foodstuffs and can, in some antibiotics at least, even turn toxic. RM Why do your eyes water when your nose is hit?

The nose is soft and sensitive, and the nasal passage is connected to the eyes via the tear ducts. Normally this allows the lacrimal fluid (tears) to drain through the nose. But when the fluid build-up in the nose is sufficient, the flow can block the normal draining path, so that the tears that are produced have nowhere to go. Why do humans cry? We produce three different kinds of tears. Basal tears lubricate the eyeball and make it optically smoother. These are produced continuously at a rate of almost 300ml a day. Reflex tears are produced in response to physical or chemical stimulus and wash away irritants. The third kind is produced in response to high levels of emotion. This stimulates the cranial nerve in the brain, which sends neurotransmitters to the lachrymal glands. It also raises the blood pressure in the face, which tends to increase the flow of tears. Emotional tears contain high levels of manganese and the hormone prolactin (which normally stimulates the mammary glands to produce milk). Humans are the only animals that cry in this way and it has been suggested that emotional crying may have evolved as a way to remove excess levels of certain chemicals and only later became ritualised as a way of signaling emotional distress. Can dock leaves really sooth nettle stings? No, the myth of dock leaves soothing nettle stings arose because of parents desires to find something close by with which to placate their stung child. Why have humans evolved to have less body hair than apes? The only hairs that humans have completely lost are the vibrissae, or sensory whiskers. The rest of our bodies are actually covered with very short, very fine hair called vellus. The difference between humans and apes lies in the relative proportions and distribution of vellus hair compared with our longer, darker hair (known as terminal hair). There have been many different attempts to explain the relative hairlessness of humans, but so far none have achieved general consensus. It has been suggested that our hair was lost during a semi-aquatic period of our prehistory, that it was lost to allow improved cooling from sweating on the hot African savannah and even that we didnt lose our hair until Neanderthal man started wearing clothes about 200 million years ago. This is all speculative however as hair doesnt fossilise well so we dont even know for sure if hairlessness is unique to humans.

Why cant seagulls fart? I can find no published study or even an oblique reference to the myth that suggests they might not! Seagulls, and birds in general, have a single opening called the cloaca, which serves for removing both the waste products of the kidneys and the intestines. This has a muscular sphincter to hold it closed, much like the anus. The birds digestive tract, though shorter than ours, still contains bacteria and these bacteria will produce gas. When the gas pressure exceeds the elastic strength of the cloaca sphincter, the result must inevitably be a fart. Possibly the

reason seagulls might have acquired a reputation for never farting is that when a seagull poops in mid-air the person below suffers the immediate consequences. But with a mid-air fart, whos to know? What exactly is 20:20 vision? If you have perfect visual acuity, you have 20/20 vision, as measured by the standard eye chart devised by a Dutch ophthalmologist called Dr Hermann Snellen in 1862. The charts, which are still in use, have a single large letter at the top and lines of progressively smaller letters below. The first figure refers to how far away (in feet) the person whose vision is being measured is sitting or standing from the chart. The second figure refers to how far away a person with good vision would have to be and still be able to read the same line of letters as the person being tested. If you had 20/30 vision, a person with perfect vision could read at 30 feet the same letters that you can just make out at 20 feet. These distances are now generally expressed in metres, so that perfect 20:20 sight would now be written as 6:6. Could a human genetic mutation produce a superhero power? No, genetic mutations just cause a gene that codes for one amino acid chain to code for another slightly different chain. Do opposites really attract? No, people are likely to choose partners who are similar when it comes to three of the big five personality traits agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness, extraversion and neuroticism. Do lions purr? All members of the cat family purr, although the Pantherinae subfamily which includes the lion can only purr while exhaling. Are some people born lucky? Luck is random, or it isnt really luck. What changes from one person to another is our perception of luck and good fortune. Professor Richard Wiseman, Focus contributor and author of The Luck Factor has concluded that some people are better than others in acting upon chance opportunities and adopting a relaxed attitude that is open to new experiences. The very fact that these people think of themselves as lucky, tends to mean that they interpret their life in an optimistic way that exaggerates the effect of good luck and downplays any bad luck. How many cigarettes would I have to smoke to become addicted? Nicotine addiction is assessed using the Fagerstrom Test. This is a short questionnaire that principally assesses how many cigarettes you smoke a day, and how soon after waking you smoke your first cigarette. It takes more than a single cigarette to become hooked, but addiction in young smokers is typically established within a year of first experimenting with tobacco. LV

Why do clouds float? The updraughts of warm, moist air that form clouds as they cool also serve to keep them in the sky. The total amount of water in a typical cloud weighs as much as 200 bull elephants, but it doesnt crash down to the ground because the water is broken up into tiny droplets and ice crystals. Even the largest dropletsonly have a radius of 0.1mm. A droplet of this size falling freely would experience so much air resistance that its maximum speed would be a mere 30cm/s, but in a cloud the downward speed is balanced by the upward speed of the rising air. Only when many such droplets coalesce can they become big enough to fall as rain The air speed necessary to keep clouds floating depends on the type of cloud. Flat, spread-out stratiform clouds are formed and supported by weak air currents rising at only a few centimeters per second. Cumulus (or convective) clouds, which are the ones responsible for heavy rain and storms, contain bigger droplets and need updraughts of a few metres per second to support them. At what point does space begin? Amazingly, more than 50 years after astronauts started exploring space, theres still no internationally recognized legal definition of where they have ventured. NASA traditionally awards anyone who reaches an altitude of 80km astronauts wings. During the 1960s eight pilots from NASAs X-15 experimental rocket plane were awarded this accolade, like the astronauts of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programmes, with pilot Joe Walker twice reaching a height of more than 100km in 1963. Most experts agree that missions to this altitude constitute genuine spaceflight, and it may yet become the legal standard, with lawyers in Australia in 2002 becoming the first to adopt 100km as the definition of where space begins. Why do our noses run when we eat hot food? A runny nose is normally caused by streaming eyes draining through the tear ducts into the nose. The watering eyes response is mediated by the trigeminal nerve, which is the main facial nerve and has branches in the mouth, nose and eyes. The response probably evolved as a way of flushing the eyes and nose of irritants. With hot food, that irritant is the capsaicin oil; in cold weather, the drying effect of the wind is to blame. How slow could I waterski before Id sink? (I weigh 65kg) A back-of-the-envelope calculation based on Newtons Laws of Motion gives a figure of 20km/h. The lift force that keeps you up is a reaction to the force that you have to exert to move water out of the way as you travel through it. Its value depends on your speed, the area of ski in contact with the water, and the angle of attack of the skis with the water. From water-skiing photos and films it looks as though a typical angle of attack is around 15, which gives a speed of 20km/h to just keep your weight up. Dont take this figure too seriously though, as it doesnt allow for frictional drag, bow wave effects or ski shape. It seems to fit with experience, however, and also with the claim that an elite K-4 kayaking team could tow a light waterskier at a record speed of just over 20km/h. Why do humans laugh when tickled?

Most species respond to tickling or other light touches by withdrawing to avoid the attack on the vulnerable area. It appears that we learn to laugh at tickling as children only when we perceive the tickling as a mock attack that is actually an act of personal closeness. Interestingly, recent research by the cognitive neuroscientist Sarah-Jayne Blakemore has shown that we cant tickle ourselves, no matter how hard we try. Do fish drink? Yes and no. While freshwater fish absorb more than enough water by osmosis through their gills, saltwater fish do drink because they lose water by osmosis. Are Inuit loos made of ice? Inuit toilets are just the same as yours or mine. The closest most Arctic people get to an igloo is watching Nanook of the North on DVD. Can giraffes swim? Yes, the BBCs Big Cat Diary crew has filmed a giraffe swimming a short distance in Kenyas Mara river. Does playing music to plants help them grow? No, there are a few plants that will react to sound vibration, for example Mimosa pudica, but musical appreciation is a different thing entirely. Does peeing on a jellyfish sting really ease the pain? No, urinating will probably cause even more nematocysts, tiny spring-loaded harpoons that inject venom under your skin, to fire! Why do all planets and moons spin? The reason is tied to the origins of the Solar System as a primordial Sun surrounded by initially randomly swirling clouds of dust and gas. Pulled towards the Sun by gravity, these clouds became denser, with internal collisions leading to a preferred direction of motion. Like water spiralling round a plughole, the collapsing clouds swirled in this direction at an ever-faster rate, eventually becoming dense enough to collapse under their own gravity and form spinning planets and moons. The one exception is Saturns moon Hyperion, which seems to have undergone a very violent impact, turning it into a potato-shaped rock that tumbles chaotically through space. RM How do we know the speed of light is the same for everyone? This is the assertion behind the theory of special relativity and its not obvious. The speed of a train may be 200km/h to a stationary observer, but 400km/h relative to a train coming the other

way. Einsteins claim that the speed of light is the same for everyone, regardless of how theyre moving, was confirmed by experiments at CER N in Geneva. Sub-atomic particles were accelerated to 99.975 per cent of the speed of light, but when the speed of light they emitted was measured, it turned out to be 300,000km/s the same as when the particles are stationary, as Einstein predicted Why are some people doublejointed? The actual number of joints in your limbs doesnt vary except in cases of very severe developmental abnormality. But the ligaments that hold together the bones on either side of a joint do vary in elasticity from one person to another. The young, and those that regularly stretch these joints through gymnastics or yoga, can achieve a range of movement that appears unnatural to the rest of us.Truly freakish joint positioning, known as hypermobility is either due to misaligned or malformed bones at the joints or Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome which is an inherited condition that affects the structure of the collagen protein in the skin, ligaments and bones. There are also some people that have reduced joint proprioception, so the brain misjudges how stretched a joint is and does not signal the muscles appropriately. Why does cake and bread go hard, but biscuits go soft when stale? Whole books have been written on this. The basic answer for bread concerns the crystals of starch in the flour, which are gelatinised during baking (they take up water and become soft). This starch gradually recrystallises over a few days in a process called retrogradation, so that the bread becomes harder. The starch in biscuits also undergoes this process, but it can be overwhelmed by the effect of the sugar that is present in many biscuit recipes. Sugar takes up water from the atmosphere, and this is what causes biscuits that are left out to go soft. Cake can go either way, depending on the recipe, and both processes can be hugely affected by other ingredients in the recipe. Can power be harvested from lightning? Yes, although its probably impractical because of such problems as designing a capacitor to store energy from a fleeting burst of power. Would helium balloons float upwards on a spaceship? No, there is no up on a spaceship, because there is no external gravitational field to tell us which way is down. In the absence of gravity there is no force to push or pull the balloon. Would a metal plate in my head make it stick to magnets? No, because metals used for prosthetic purposes such as titanium are nonferromagnetic alloys. So you can relax, and feel free to have a metal plate fitted to your head with no fear of being stuck to a magnet. Is there mathematics in music?

Yes, theres a host of connections between maths and music from the relationship between the lengths of plucked strings and the notes they produce to the symmetry of Bachs cantatas. Can computers generate truly random numbers? Yes, and its because heat in electrical components causes electrons inside to move around unpredictably. This behaviour can be captured electronically and digitised as a sequence of truly random numbers. Why cant chickens fly? Wild chickens certainly can fly and do. However, they have been selectively bredfor size for thousands of years and are now too heavy for more than a short flap to the top of a tree. Freerange chickens also often have the flight feathers on one wing clipped. This makes them fly in a short circle, which discourages them from flying away. Why do pigeons bob their heads? The most likely theory is for the same reason that we move our eyes around to stabilise the image of their surroundings while in motion. When a pigeon is walking on a treadmill, so that its environment remains relatively the same, its head does not bob. Not all birds bob their heads, though, so the issue is not yet fully resolved. What exactly is an itch? Itching, or pruritis, is caused by any light skin stimulation that is just a few microns in size. It probably evolved as a warning mechanism to prevent insect bites. An itch provokes immediate scratching because its the quickest way to kill a mosquito trying to give you malaria. Can dj vu be explained? Havent we answered this question before? German workers in the 19th century suggested that dj vu is a sort of cognitive burp. This occurs when the processes of sensation and perception, that normally occur simultaneously, somehow get out of sync. The modern take on this is that the retrieval and familiarity processes in the brain are not synchronised. But there are many othertheories, and no-one really knows, so at the moment the answer is no, it cannot. Why do planes dim their cabin lights when they take off? The reason is to acclimatise passengers eyes to the dark. This isnt just for comfort, but is a valuable safety procedure. If the plane had to be evacuated in an emergency, passengers eyes would be better suited to the darkness outside. Why do we have five fingers and five toes?

Its probably nothing more than an accident. All tetrapods (the group of vertebrates that includes the mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians) are descended from a pentadactyl ancestor. Pentadactyl means five-fingered and this basic pattern has been preserved in all descendant animal groups. The common ancestor of the tetrapods was a lobe-finned fish living in the Devonian period, around 365 million years ago. The fossil record also shows fish with six and seven fingers in their fins at around the same time, but there is no clear reason why the fivefingered form survived to become the template for land life. Possibly having fewer finger bones allowed each to become stronger and this helped when crawling out of the water. However, there is nothing magic about the number five and subsequent evolutionary pressures have driven many species to fuse fingers and toes together to form thicker, stronger hooves and claws that are better suited to their particular environment. Why is my beer brown, but the head white? The brown colour comes from malt, which is produced by allowing barley grains to germinate and then roasting them. A low roasting temperature makes a light beer. A higher temperature makes a darker beer. Just be thankful that you arent living in the 19th century, when some publicans tried to shortcut the process by adding concentrated sulfuric acid to their light-coloured beers, carbonising the sugars to produce an instant dark brown colour, and instant stomach problems in those who drank it. The bubbles in the head are surrounded by a film of liquid beer, but the film is so thin that it cant absorb enough light to affect the colour of white light as it passes through. White light reflected from the surface of the bubbles also stays white, giving it its overall white effect. Does cheese give you nightmares? Any heavy meal before bed can make you spend more time in REM sleep and therefore dream more. But there is no evidence to suggest that cheese is particularly effective at causing dreams, good or bad. LV What is the coldest place in the Universe? The coldest place in the Universe is in the Boomerang Nebula, a cloud of dust and gases 5000 lightyears from Earth. It has a temperature of -272C (-457.6F) and is formed by the rapid expansion of gas and dust flowing away from its central ageing star. Is talking to yourself really a sign of madness? No, the phenomenon known as private speech, in which people talk aloud to themselves, particularly when stressed or alone, is perfectly normal. Can dock leaves really sooth nettle stings? No, the myth of dock leaves soothing nettle stings arose because of parents desires to find something close by with which to placate their stung child.

Why does clingfilm cling? Clingfilm is either made from PVC or low density polyethylene thats treated to make it stretch. When you unroll the clingfilm, some of the electrons on the surface of one layer get pulled away onto the adjacent layer. This creates patches of positive and negative electrostatic charge. Because clingfilm is a good insulator, this charge persists for quite a while. When you wrap the clingfilm around itself or another insulator (like glass) the electrostatic charge induces an opposite charge in the other surface and the two stick together. If you try this on a conductor, like metal, it wont stick because the charge is dispersed. Did the Big Bang make a bang? As sound is made up of wave-like changes in density, its impossible to hear anything in a true vacuum. Even so, the early Universe wasnt a vacuum, being filled instead with hydrogen and ionised gas. The resulting sound of the Big Bang would be far too low-frequency to hear directly, but using real cosmic data and boosting the frequency, cosmologist Professor John Cramer of the University of Washington has simulated the sound, which can be heard at http://bit.ly/im0N. How do you create artificial gravity in spacecraft? Studies of astronauts on long missions have shown that prolonged exposure to weightlessness weakens muscles and bones, prompting scientists to seek ways of generating artificial gravity aboard spacecraft. Even before the first space flights, visionaries such as Werner Von Braun suggested making spacecraft spin to create a centrifugal effect that feels like gravity. But experiments in the 1960s and 1970s revealed that rotation rates greater than around 2rpm tended to make people feel nauseous. This was bad news; such a slow spin rate meant that to generate an effect that could mimic Earth-like gravity, a spacecraft would need a diameter of around 450m. Engineers are still trying to solve the problem, but have had limited success. A team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has experimented with a gravity gym essentially a man-sized spin-dryer that astronauts can climb into to experience a short period of artificial gravity. The rotation rate must- be higher than the spaceship 23rpm so nausea is still a problem. There are other ways, such as making the spacecraft permanently accelerate at 1G or building a vehicle so large that it naturally generates its own gravity. But as yet both methods are far beyond our technical abilities.