Bright Side

Why do animals have tails? Millions of years ago, lots of animals used their tails to help them swim. When some of them left the water behind, their tails changed or disappeared completely. Imagine you live in a world where this last part didn't happen, and everyone has tails – including people. This gives them special abilities. So what if you had an animal tail?

Our pets use their tails to communicate. They can reveal a lot about the emotions a dog or cat is experiencing. In the same way, these human tails would show how people feel. Those specialists who can read facial expressions to see if someone is telling the truth would have also learned to read tail movements. This also would make it extra hard to play poker. Your wagging tail would let everyone at the table know when you have a good hand!

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You’d never know it, but the way you charge your phone can be crucial for not only your electricity bills and safety, but also the lifespan of its battery. The phone batteries used today are based on a precise number of charge cycles and to make them last longer, it is advised to never charge them to 100% or drain them to 0%.

If, for some reason, you wanna discontinue your phone use for some time, charge it to 50% and turn it off. This percentage is said to be the healthiest for a lithium-ion battery. With this level of charge, you can store it for months with the least possible damage to your gadget. And don’t forget to turn it on every once in a while and top off the battery. But there are also other tips about the right way to charge your phone, so you can use it in the best way possible and avoid any dangers.

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Do you like absurd hypothetical questions? Here's one them. What if giant spiders occupied your city? Picture this: You wake up and switch on the TV. It's yakking in the background while you go on with your morning routine. A news program's on, and you hear the presenter talking about giant spiders, city authorities, and invasion, while you burn your toast. It sounds too sci-fi, and you don't pay it too much attention. They're probably talking about a new action movie.

An hour later, you get into your car and switch on the radio. The reception is surprisingly weak, and you can only catch separate words: "...spiders... caution... unprecedented... be careful... at home until..." You start to feel nervous - what danger are they warning about? You're driving through your neighborhood, heading for the downtown. But just as you're about to turn into the main road, your foot hits the brakes while your mind goes blank...

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And, here you are. On Earth. 66 million years ago. It’s one of the warmest periods in the planet’s history. There are no icecaps yet – everything is lush and green. Dinosaurs roam the Earth. Massive sauropods peacefully chew on flowering plants and trees, their young ones following closely by their side. But what is that bright spot in the sky? It grows bigger, brighter. This is the asteroid! Little do the great reptiles know: today marks the beginning of one of the largest mass extinction events in Earth’s history – ¾ of life on our planet will be wiped out...

So what happened after the asteroid hit the Earth 66 years ago? The cosmic monster falling toward the Earth was the size of Mount Everest. At least 6 miles wide and weighing 460 trillion tons, the meteor was coming in hot…and fast. 12 miles per second, heading right for the Yucatan Peninsula in present-day Mexico. At that speed, it could travel from LA to New York in under 4 minutes!

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Each person is unique – sometimes more than we think. Even though we all have the same number of limbs and similar features, some small details make everyone an X-Man of sorts. Today we'll tell you about exceptional physical skills and characteristics found in only a tiny percentage of people around the world. Perhaps you possess some of these rare body features too?

For example, less than 50 people have ever had the Rh-null blood type, dubbed "golden blood." Three percent of people all over the planet have lines creating the letter X on both their hands. There are people who don't have to stress over how much calcium they consume. They have a rare mutation in the LRP5 gene. Another gene mutation helps people keep their bad cholesterol levels extremely low. Unfortunately, only 2 to 3% of people have this useful feature.

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Astronomers from MIT registered a repeating signal from 500 million light years away. Such signals are called fast radio bursts, or FRBs, and they’re usually singular events. No one knows what their sources are, but they could be supernovae or bursts of energy from quasars. This repeating one, though, is pretty creepy because it’s regular: for four days, radio equipment captures signals all the time, and then they abruptly stop. But after 12 days, the same pattern begins: 4 days of constant radio bursts and 12 more days of silence.

Astronomers managed to locate the signal as coming from a galaxy half a billion light years away from us, but what causes it is still unknown. It may be a spinning quasar or a supermassive black hole, but an alien technology is not excluded either. By the way, there just might be about 6 billion Earth-like planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone. The latest data has shown that every fifth Sun-like star can have at least one planet in its habitable zone! Okay, here's the most amazing news from the further reaches of outer space.

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So, it's pouring outside when you get on a plane. If you were in a car, you’d simply switch on the windshield wipers and the headlights after turning the key in the ignition. Do pilots do all that? Airplanes spark so many questions! Have you ever thought of what happens when lightning hits a plane? Or why there are holes in airplane windows? Or what causes turbulence?

Why are aircraft windows round? Why are there hooks on the wings? Why don’t airplanes have parachutes for passengers? Well, everything connected with aircraft is well-planned and thought out. Perhaps it’s the main reason why a plane is the safest way to travel. So, let's try to answer the most popular questions about airplanes.

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Have you ever thought of the negative effects of video games? Or ever wondered what would happen to you if you played video games, say, for a year non-stop? Let me tell you my story. It all started a year ago, when I got a new job. I have to admit I’m quite a gamer. So when I saw the ad in the paper, I called them immediately. Wanted: Video Game Player. It turned out the offer wasn’t that simple. Yes, my job was to play video games. But all day long. 15 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days in total.

I’d have 8 hours to sleep and a half an hour in the morning and in the evening to eat and shower. No days off, no vacation. Take it or leave it. It scared me, and I was reluctant to agree. But then the employer told me my yearly salary, and I was in. If I did it for a year, I’d never have to work again. So, I decided to give it a try.

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How many habitable planets are there? Water is the basis of life in any part of the universe. So potentially inhabited planets must have liquid water on them to support life. An incredible number of circumstances must come together for this. The planet must be in the habitable zone of the star. A little closer to the star, and the water will evaporate, leaving no chance for oceans and seas to form. This is what happened on Venus. Too far from the star, and the planet becomes too cold. Water can only exist in the form of ice on the surface and there just might be liquid water deep below. Neptune is one example of this.

In our galaxy alone, there are countless stars. Really you can’t count on them. Near each of them may be a planet. They are called exoplanets. And some of them may be in the habitable zone and have everything for life to form on them. From a list of 4,500 known exoplanets, scientists have identified 24 that can be superhabitable. This is the type of planet that is suitable for the existence and evolution of life even more than the Earth!

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The screech of brakes on a wet road, eyes of the driver filled with horror, an ear-splitting bump of impact… You open your eyes to the rain falling on your face and don’t see anything through the blur at first. Then, your vision clears, and you see the gray sky and the black spot of a face above you. “Are you alright? I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you…” You get up with the help of the driver who hit you. Thankfully, apart from torn clothes, no serious damage has been done, and you don’t even feel pain. Your exoskeleton took all the impact upon itself.

At home, you take off your shirt and check the chitin plates on your side. They seem absolutely fine. Exoskeleton is such a wonderful evolutionary feature, after all! The plates are hard enough to take a serious impact without breaking, yet they’re also flexible, acting a bit like a spring when something hits them... We tried to imagine what our life would be like if people had exoskeletons. Yep, this is another cool "what if" video for those who love fantasy stories.

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