Bright Side

Is it possible to predict earthquakes? In 2009, a man in L’Aquila, Italy saw flickering lights dancing above the stone street. He immediately knew what to do and moved his family to a safer place. Only seconds later, a massive 8.3 magnitude earthquake hit the whole region. His knowledge of the strange lights saved his and his family’s lives. So what are those mysterious warnings?

For centuries people interpreted the lights as something otherworldly. The scientific community didn’t take them seriously, just put them down to a false recollection, a mind trick, or pure imagination. Then came the invention of photography, and more and more evidence of the earthquake lights appeared. That physical evidence wasn't as easy to dismiss as old legends were.

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Horses live without a gall bladder. Lots of predatory animals, including our beloved cats and dogs, don’t have sweat glands on their bodies. Lungless salamanders live happily without — you guessed it — lungs. And lots of snake species have only one working lung. So, as you have probably guessed, we've prepared another compilation of cool facts about animals. Did you know that some animals don't have really important organs?

And perhaps the most impossible creature in the world is a jellyfish. It doesn’t have any sensory organs we’re used to, like eyes, ears, and nose, it has no skeleton, but most importantly, it hasn’t got a brain or heart. Its body is almost entirely made of water — that’s why, if you take a jellyfish out of the sea and put it on the shore, it will soon melt. It just might be that jellyfish have given up their hearts and brains for the sake of other sea creatures, because octopuses, for example, can have multiple of those!

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It was the summer of 1949. Young geologist Vadim Kolpakov was on a mission to northern Russia in the Irkutsk region. His job was to draw a geological map of the area. While on duty, he came across something so mysterious and remarkable, it’d continue to puzzle experts decades later… ooh, what could it be?

Though it’s now more famous as the Patomskiy Crater, locals had dubbed it Fire Eagle Nest, probably because it looks like a giant bird nest sitting on the hill. It rises 130 ft in the air, half as tall as a Giant Sequoia. The cone-like structure’s base has a diameter of 520 ft, almost as wide as the Seattle Space Needle is tall. But what was hiding inside would be the most surprising and baffling discovery! Let's find out more about one of the most mysterious places in the world?

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A mysterious creature, huge, fast, and lethal, is lurking somewhere in the dark. People claim to have seen a giant shark here and there all over the planet. Maybe it's the Megalodon, an ancient predator that's believed to be long gone? But could Megalodon still live In the deep ocean? This shark was the real king of the oceans - it even hunted whales! Surely such a majestic creature couldn't disappear without a trace? And indeed, there have been several cases when witnesses were sure they had seen the Meg. But could it be just their fear talking?

The Megalodon, which means "big tooth," is the largest shark ever to roam the Earth's seas and oceans. It reportedly lived 23 to 3.6 million years ago and was truly enormous. Its bite was more powerful than that of a T-Rex. And no wonder - not only did the animal have super-strong jaws, but its teeth also reached 7 inches in length! Even better, the Megalodon had about 300 teeth growing in at least 6 rows. The shark itself could grow up to 59 ft - that's twice the length of a London double-decker bus!

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What are polar day and polar night? Well, imagine you arrive in the small town in Northern Norway. The first thing you notice in your hotel room is thick black curtains. From the end of May to the end of July is like one endless day. Locals might be used to this extreme lifestyle but for visitors, it can be quite disorienting. Like having jet lag that just won’t go away.

During endless summer days, you don't have to adhere to your usual daily routine. It's always light, and you need to accept this. Wake up at 2 a.m? Great, go for a jog! If you want to sleep after lunch, go to bed and don't worry about it. Thanks to the endless sun, you're charged with energy, so all the people here are happy and active. They take advantage of these eternal days because when winter comes, so do the endless nights… So why does this happen?

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In 2010, fossilized fish was uncovered 250 miles west of the Nile river, where the Sahara Desert was as arid as ever. This chance finding led scientists to believe there could’ve been sea where the Sahara is now, so they conducted a geological survey of the area. And it yielded unexpected results: they found evidence of something huge under the sands, and it wasn’t part of any sea at all.

For several months, the research continued with GPS equipment on land, and later, when all the ground data was collected, scientists took a look at the area from a satellite. The view was astounding! Actually, in this area, ancient human settlements had been found previously, and now the researchers finally had the answer as to why exactly they had chosen those spots to live. By the way, did you know that whales had once been land animals that evolved into marine ones? We’ll talk about that too!

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How do bees live in colonies? How do they get their jobs? What's the role of the queen bee? If you're looking for the most interesting facts about animals, check out these facts about bees you probably didn't know. And to make things more interesting let's imagine what your life would be like if you become a bee for 24 hours! Okay, you open your eyes and look around cautiously. The next moment, you're internally screaming in horror: you don't see familiar colors! There's no use denying the obvious - you're a honey bee.

Now, you have another problem at hand - you need to figure out what type of bee you are. Are you the Queen? A drone? A worker? You don't see any other bees - those would be the Queen's attendants, following her all day, feeding, and cleaning. Plus, you woke up outside the hive, and the Queen hardly ever leaves it. So, you aren't the Queen. Maybe it's for the better - despite the title, such bees don't manage the hive or order work bees around.

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Normally, our planet makes a rotation every 24 hours at a speed of 1040 mph. This is faster than the speed of sound and several times faster than the fastest cars in the world. But what if the Earth stopped spinning? Imagine that our planet's rotation stops one day and tomorrow never comes. Life will never be the same. But if you can escape to an underground bunker, you may have a chance to carry on.

So, you close the hatch, go deep underground, and hear the chaos that has begun on the surface. All the people, houses, cars, ships, roads, trees, animals, topsoil, anything not connected to bedrock, will fly off to the East. Hurricanes and tsunamis will appear. The endless today brings huge, global earthquakes. And volcanoes will awaken and erupt, threatening to destroy everything. Two days later, you realize that silence has come to the surface...

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What will the car of the future look like? Well, a few years ago, some Lamborghini engineers together with researchers at MIT came up with a car design that’s straight out of the far future. The Terzo Millennio, which means ‘third millennium’ in Italian, is a car that’s capable of repairing itself. The CEO of Lamborghini says the Terzo Millennio will allow the company to revolutionize the world of engineering, and he could be right.

The engineers have also made another breakthrough by designing the car to be all-electric. The Terzo Millennio uses supercapacitors instead of batteries because they can be charged faster and contain more energy. As for the numbers, they’re no less impressive than the Lamborghini’s futuristic abilities. The car is the first product of a three-year, $120 million partnership. So how does the new technology used in the car actually work?

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What would happen if video games were banned? So, you bought yourself a new game that was on sale on Monday and can’t wait to try it out. This whole week’s been a drag! But now you’ve just one day to tolerate before you’re free for the whole weekend. As soon as the clock strikes 5 p.m., you’re out of the office and heading straight home. While walking down the street, you check the feed on your smartphone, and something attracts your attention. “Breaking news,” the heading says. “Video games proven to be dangerous!”

You come home, take a shower and make a quick dinner. Then you turn on your PC and double-click the new game’s icon in anticipation. Nothing happens. You wait, thinking the game might be too heavy for your computer — perhaps it’s time to upgrade it. A couple of minutes pass with no sign of the game launching, so you double-click it again. Still nothing. You open the launcher, and that’s where the news catches up with you: on the familiar gray and black background, there’s a huge banner saying, “Please read: game ban in effect.”

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