9 Strange Facts About Mars

1. Mars has the biggest mountain in the solar system.

It’s called “Olympus Mons” and it’s actually a dormant volcano. Olympus Mons is 15.5 miles high and 372 miles across. To give you an idea, Mt. Everest is between 5 and 6 miles tall. Mars also has the biggest canyon system in the known universe, the “Valles Marineris,” which is 2,500 miles long and 4 miles deep.

2. People have always wondered about life on mars because of the “canals” first seen by early astronomers.

This is why we have always imagined alien invaders coming from there, and not Jupiter or Venus. Actually, Mars is one of the least habitable planets, with freezing temperatures, solar winds, and almost no atmosphere. It is far more likely for there to be life on Venus. The canals seen by early observers are long, straight lines on the planet’s surface that scientists believe are evidence of water.

3. Mars is named after the Roman god of war because its red color reminded early observers of blood.

The reason for the red color is that the soil is composed of iron oxide, or what we commonly call rust.

4. Compared to the other planets in the solar system, Mars is quite small.

It is half the size of earth. Mars has about a third of the earth’s gravity, which means that you can jump three times as high.

5. In the 1970’s, the Viking orbiter took pictures of what appear to be giant faces and pyramids carved into the planet’s surface in the Cydonia region.

The biggest looks like the Sphinx of Egypt and is 2,000 feet high and miles across. While this discovery has gotten UFOlogists excited, scientists say they are just eroded mesas. Many still believe that the faces are too symmetrical to be natural, and that they are evidence of ancient alien civilizations.

6. Mars has some of the wildest weather in the solar system.

It has tremendous wind storms, dust storms and small tornadoes (dust devils). In 2001, a huge dust storm covered the entire planet for several earth days. Scientists are puzzled that a planet with so little atmosphere could have raging storms such as these. They don’t know what causes them, but there are more storms when Mars is close to the sun. When it’s on the farther end of its orbit, there are icy clouds made of carbon dioxide and dust. This is also strange because Mars has no surface water.

7. There has been a search for life on mars, and also a search for water.

After years of studying every crack on the planet’s surface for evidence of water, scientists have finally found it. The Phoenix mission found that there are huge deposits of ice underneath the planet’s surface.

8. Mars has two moons, and one of it is going to crash into it.

The moon Phobos orbits dangerously close to Mars’ atmosphere. Someday, the gravitational pull with smash the moon to bits. The debris will stay in Mars’ orbit, making a ring like the rings of Saturn. Eventually, it will rain down on Mars. Scientists don’t know when this will happen, but predict it will be in the next 50 years.

9. Only 1/3 of all the missions to Mars have been successful.

So many missions have disappeared that it has led scientists to wonder if something strange is happening. They refer to Mars as the “Bermuda Triangle” of the solar system

Original Posted by The Most Interesting Facts About Mars (factsaboutmars.net)

10 Facts about Chocolate that you didnt know

Chocolate is one of the most popular and yummiest types of foods that will likely stay at the top of most peoples favorite food lists. Chocolate is something most of us have grown up enjoying, but very few of us have taken the time to learn the many facts that are associated with Chocolate. There are actually hundreds of facts that are associated with Chocolate and I have created a list of the ones that I find most interesting. If you want to know the nutritional values in the different types of chocolate, check out thesechocolate nutrition facts.

1. It is a known fact that chocolate has caffeine in it. But did you know that you would have to eat more then a dozen chocolate bars to get the same amount of caffeine from a cup of coffee? There are about 5 to 10 mg’s of caffeine in one ounce of bitter chocolate, 5 mgs in milk chocolate, and 10mgs in a six-ounce cup of cocoa.

2. Chocolate is actually a valuable energy source. A single chocolate chip can provide enough energy for an    adult human to walk 150 ft.

3. Chocolate has great health benefits. It helps with depression, high blood pressure, Tumors and Pre-menstrual syndromes.

4. Chocolate does not cause or aggravate acne, this is a myth.

5. One ounce of baking chocolate or cocoa contains 10% of the daily recommended intake of iron.

6. Chocolate can be deadly for dogs. Chocolate contains an ingredient called “Theobromine” which can be toxic to a dogscentral nervous system and cardiac muscles.

7. People spend  more than $7 billion dollars a year on chocolate.

8. The per capita consumption of chocolate indicates that each person consumes 12 pounds of chocolate each year.

9. Milk Chocolate is the most preferred type of chocolate, however dark chocolate is especially popular among men.

10. In Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “Psycho” chocolate syrup was used to indicate blood in the famous shower scene.

Original Posted by an  Info Barrel Author (infobarrel.com)

Tropical Storm Bonnie forms near the Bahamas

(Reuters) – A tropical storm formed near the Bahamas on Thursday on a track that could take it over BP’s oil spill site in the Gulf of Mexico.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Tropical Storm Bonnie, the second named storm of the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season, was packing maximum sustained winds of 40 miles per hour.

Weather models project the storm will skirt south of Florida and swirl northwest across the oil-rich central Gulf of Mexico, near where BP is cleaning up its massive oil spill, before hitting the Louisiana or Texas coasts.

Forecasters say this year’s hurricane season could be the worst since 2005, when Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma caused havoc in the Gulf Coast, damaging oil rigs and refineries and forcing sharp cuts in production.

Katrina was the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history when in flooded New Orleans, as well as one of the country’s deadliest hurricanes.

The hurricane season runs from June 1 through November 30 and often affects the Gulf of Mexico, home to about 30 percent of U.S. oil production, 11 percent of natural gas production, and more than 43 percent of U.S. refinery capacity.

Hurricane Alex, the season’s first hurricane, drenched the Texas-Mexicoborder on April 1 as it made landfall as a Category 2 storm, spawning tornadoes and flooding towns, but it spared U.S. oil wells.

(Reporting by Tom Brown, Editing by Philip Barbara).

Original Posted By Reuters.com

Samantha Ronson Visits Lindsay Lohan in Jail

A day after Lindsay Lohan’s mom Dina, sister Ali and business manager Lou Taylor visited her in jail, the actress got to see another familiar face: ex-girlfriend Samantha Ronson.

The DJ, 32, arrived at Century Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood, Calif., around 1:40 p.m. on Thursday and stayed about an hour. While leaving the all-women’s jail, Ronson snapped at a reporter who asked how Lohan, 24, was holding up.

“How do you think she’s doing?” Ronson replied.

Later, on her Twitter page, Ronson wrote: “Song Of The Day: Rolling Stones – Waiting on A Friend.”

Lohan’s attorney, Shawn Chapman Holley, also dropped by and her former attorney Blair Berk visited her earlier in the day. “She’s good. She’s (doing) better every day,” Chapman Holley says.

Though visiting hours at the jail are on the weekend for family and friends, Lohan has been able to see visitors “for security reasons. It’s for the safety of everyone,” law enforcement officials told local TV station KTLA.

Click Here To Continue Reading (people.com)