The reason is because warm air doesn't naturally rise when there's no gravity. If you don't have a way of circulating air, then the carbon dioxide you expel when you breathe can form a bubble around your nose. Eventually, the air available to you wouldn’t have enough oxygen and you would die.
Learn more about what astronauts have to go through to sleep at the source.
How do they happen? The winds blowing accross the Maracaibo lake and other swampy plains around the area meet with the Andes mountain ridges. These winds carry a lot of heat and moisture, which are perfect for creating electric charges. The result? Lightning for 280 times an hour, 10 hours a day for 160 nights a year!
It is believed that the phenomenon has been going around since at least the 16th century (and most likely, even more than that). The first time this storm was reported in writing was an epic poem called "la Dragontea," by Lope de Vega in 1597, which told of the defeat of Sir Francis Drake at this site. Drake tried to attack the city of Maracaibo, but the lightning gave away his position and the city was able to respond in time.
All the electric activity makes the Catatumbo Lightning the largest single generator of Ozone in the planet. The lightning is visible up to 400 km away! Because of this, it's also called as the Maracaibo Beacon.
As you may imagine, it's a very large number. It is even greater than a trillion trillions or 10 to the 27th power. In fact, it is 1.4 times larger than that. Kind of difficult to fathom or even talk about considering there is no unit of distance nearly that large.
This is why, in 2010, UC Davis physics student Austin Sendek petitioned the International System of Units to name 10 to the 27th power one "hella." Multiple units of this distance would be "hellameters." Sendek felt it was about time that large units of measurement got their own names and what better one than "hella?" If his petition goes through, people can officially declare the universe 1.4 hella meters wide. That's hella big.
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Some awesome lists!
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In 2010, NASA discovered 14 "brown dwarfs," which were 14 of the coldest stars it had ever found. Then in 2011, it found some that were even cooler. NASA calls these 6 stars "Y-dwarfs." These "Y-dwarfs" are even cooler than the human body.
Scientists designate these cool orbs "failed stars" because they cannot fuse atoms at their core like regular stars. They also gradually fade until their light is no longer visible to the human eye. In order to find them, NASA developed a special infrared telescope and attached it to a satellite.
Today, it is the tallest building in the US outside of urbanized cities like New York and Cincinnati. The VAB completed it's construction in 1966 and was first used to build the Saturn V rocket for the Apollo program.
After that it was used for housing Space Shuttle fuel tanks and other flight hardware, and served as a place where Space Shuttle orbiters were attached to rocket boosters. At 526 feet tall, 716 feet long, and 518 feet wide, it covers 8 acres of land. At such a size, on very humid days the building has it's own weather, with rain clouds forming below the ceiling.
The building has a moisture reduction system to mitigate this problem, though. What’s odd is that the building is made to withstand hurricanes and tropical storms, but weather still appears inside it.
