Sapphires and rubies are the same stone. They only look different due to slight impurities!

Sapphires and rubies look quite different. While both precious stones, sapphires are known to be deep blue and rubies are red. However, they are actually the same stone. Corundum is a crystalline form of aluminum oxide. It is naturally clear but can be different colors when it has impurities.

If corundum is red, it is known as ruby. If it is pink-orange, it’s called padparadscha. All other colors are referred to as sapphire. So sapphires can actually be other colors besides blue. For example, there are green sapphires.

Apart from its beauty, corundum is known for it's hardness (it can scratch almost every other mineral) and it's high density. It is mined in Russia, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka and India.

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A man was cured of being unable to perceive depth by watching Hugo in 3D!

Bruce Bridgeman, was a 67 year old Neurologist went to go see Hugo with his wife in a Santa Cruz movie theater. Unfortunately for Bruce, he suffered from what is known as stereo-blindness, a disorder that doesn't allow him to experience true depth perception.

Bruce describe his disorder as '“When we’d go out and people would look up and start discussing some bird in the tree, I would still be looking for the bird when they were finished. For everybody else, the bird jumped out. But to me, it was just part of the background.”

As Bruce entered the movie theater, he was asked to pay a cover charge because the movie was in 3D. Instead of arguing with the usher trying to explain his condition, Bruce paid, took his 3D glasses, and went into the movie theater. To his amazement, Bruce was able to see the movie in it's entirety, completely in 3D!

He continued to experience this new found dimension even after he left the movie theater! He says that lamp posts stood out from the background, trees, cars, and people seemed to pop and become more vivid than ever. Remarkably, since that day, he's seen the world in 3D - depth perception and all.

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Scientists might have found a lost continent off the coast of Brazil!

A manned Japanese submersible recently shot video of an enormous mass of granite off the coast of Brazil that looks like could be part of a lost continent. If you remember your geology, South America split from Africa millions of years ago. Scientists think that this granite block might have been part of that supercontinent, but sunk when the split happened.

The place is more than 600 miles southeast of Rio de Janeiro and it's 3,000 feet underwater. Brazilian geologists say that granite is not something you find on the seabed because it only forms on land. The next step is to take samples of the granite and see it they match rock from Africa or South America; then we'll know if we're talking about the South American Atlantis.

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There is a planet that is made up of burning ice!

Gliese 436 B one of the most unusual properties found anywhere in our known Universe. It's about the same size as Neptune, yet it orbits its star at an unusually close 4.3 million miles.

That’s almost fifteen times closer to its star than Mercury is to the Sun! And yet 436 B stays completely frozen! Therefore is literally and ice cube on fire!Well, the ice on 436Bs surface is not like the ice we know here on Earth. It was created by water being so compressed that it became solid.

However, tt would look much like the ice we have here on Earth, but if you were to and pick some up, you would need a new hand, because it's burning at such a high temperature.

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There's an object in a distant galaxy emitting radio waves, and we don't know what it is!

Not so long ago, in the galaxy not so far away known as M82, a mysterious object appeared early in the year of 2010. Scientists noticed the object appeared out of the blue, and have absolutely no idea what it is, or where it came from.

The radio waves emitted from the object seemed to grow at an extremely rapid rate over the course of a few days, then all of the sudden, the radio waves stopped expanding. The radio pattern is nothing like anything scientists have ever seen before, and they have little to no idea as to what the object could be.

The object is projecting a steady source of brightness, yet at the same time, the object is moving at four times the speed of light - something scientists have only observed when an object is squirted out by a black hole. Prepare to panic, because the unknown object is actually travelling on a slight angle towards our solar system. Whatever it is, hopefully scientists figure it out and tell the world that it won't kill us.

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A star 450 light years away will soon become a supernova and outshine the moon at night!

Betelgeuse, is the name of a massive star that is incredibly close to us - considering the fact how big the universe is. The star, is only 450 light years away from planet Earth. Betelgeuse is currently one of the brightest stars in the sky at night, simply because how massive the star is.

When the star becomes a supernova, which is the inevitable fate of stars the size of Betelgeuse, it will be so bright it will outshine the moon at night - and will even be visible during the day! But, when will this massive star explode?

Astronomers have said many times that the star is as likely as to collapse and form a supernova tomorrow, as a million years from now. But, if we're lucky, we will get to see the star in our night sky outshining the moon. And don't worry, when Betelgeuse explodes, our planet will barely be effected. Only life on planets within 50 light years will be completely destroyed - but we'll be fine.

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Your brain actually lives in the past!

The brain is actually living in the past of things that have already happened, because it takes a few milliseconds for the brain to comprehend what is happening around it. So, everything that you think is happening instantly, actually happened a really really short time ago.

To test this, a research study once had people turn on a lightbulb by pushing a button, with an 80 millisecond delay. Eventually, their brains got used to that delay and assumed that 80ms was instantaneous.After repeating this step multiple times, scientists changed the length of time it took for the light to turn on to 40 milliseconds - half of the original time.

When participants pushed the red button and the light came on, they were in disbelief that they were the ones that caused the light to go on. In fact, the participants believed that the light came on BEFORE they even touched the button - a perfect experiment to show that the brain lives a delayed life.

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Baked potatoes in foil can be deadly!

If you bake a potato in aluminum foil and you leave it at room temperature, you can create an environment ripe for a bacterium called Clostridium botulinum, which causes the deadly disease known as botulism.

The reason for this is that C. Botulinum can easily contaminate potatoes and other crop that comes in contact with the soil. Usually, cooking kills the spores, but a foil-wrapped potato holds in moisture, and sometimes prevents the temperature from being high enough to kill all of them.

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Astronomers have recently discovered 18 planets the size of Jupiter!

Astronomers added 18 planets to their list of massive planets revolving massive stars, increasing the known number of planets like this by 50%. This 2011 discovery is a huge milestone for researchers trying to figure out how planets form and grow in alien solar systems.

The massive planet haul came only a few months after another team of researchers found 50 planets, including one rocky one that could be a good candidate for life. For the alien enthusiasts out there, you should know that the number of known planets is now well over 700 and rapidly climbing.

The discovery of these planets are a result of astronomers and researchers observing 'retired' stars. These stars are much more massive than our sun, and our on the declining part of their lives.

For the full story, read the source.

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Alaska is both the east- and westernmost state in the US!

The Aleutian Islands of Alaska cross the 180 degree-meridian longitude. This means that these islands are part of the Eastern hemisphere. This means that Alaska is the state that is farthest north, east & west in the United States!

If you don't believe in that technicality, the easternmost state is Maine, then Alaska retains it's northernmost and westernmost titles, and Hawaii rounds out the group by being the southernmost.

Of the lower 48 states, Maine is easternmost, Minnesota the northernmost, Washington the westernmost and Florida the southernmost.

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The University of Iowa conducted an experiment on orphan kids later called the 'Monster Study!'

It’s an ominous but revealing title. In 1939, Wendell Johnson conducted a stuttering experiment on 22 orphaned children. The children were placed in control and experimental groups and half of the children were given positive reinforcement for their speech while the other half was belittled, ridiculed, and accused on constantly stuttering.

Many of the children who went into the experiment speaking normally and received negative reinforcement came out with speech problems that they suffered from their entire lives. The experiment and it's results were initially hidden to protect Johnson’s reputation. However, the University of Iowa publically apologized for the Monster study in 2001.

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NASA Bombed Moon By A 2 Tonne Centaur Rocket- A $79 Million Science Experiment To Discover Water On Moon

In its quest to discover water on the moon, on 9th October 2009, at 7:31 a.m. ET, NASA bombed the moon by a 2.2 tonne empty rocket using LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite). The rocket crashed in the moon's surface at a speed of 5600 miles per hour. The target was a 60-mile-wide crater called Cabeus. The LCROSS crashed on the surface four minutes later.

Image Source: www.nasa.gov

It was hyped that the blast would create a large cloud of gas, dust and vaporized water ice going up to 6 miles high and which will be visible from the Earth. Although, millions who were watching the event live on the internet were left disappointed. There was barely a change observed in the crater where the missile hit. NASA claim to have gained a lot of new knowledge through the $79 million experiment.

The principal investigator, Anthony Colaprete quoted- "I'm not going to say anything about water or no water, but we got the data that we need" to answer the questions raised by many as to what have we gained from this experiment

Image Source: www.dailymail.co.uk

The LCROSS carried a visible camera, near-infrared cameras, spectrometers and a visible radiometer to guide scientists from NASA to examine the resultant dust plume. Moon's surface is like a dry desert but scientists believe that some ice is trapped deep in the craters where the sunlight cannot penetrate.

Two American spacecrafts had earlier reported the presence of water on Moon by tracing the hints of Hydrogen and Oxygen- the two elements that make up the water. These constituents were found in frozen state in deep craters of the North and South poles.
[SOURCE: www.nasa.gov]

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