Playing a B flat on a tuba arouses male alligators.
The experiment was conducted at Gatorland, a tourist attraction near Kissimmee, Florida. William Mickelsen, the Florida Orchestra’s star tuba player and one of his students played different notes on the tuba to see how gators reacted. When a B flat was played, alligators swam toward the tuba players.
When the tuba players went down to the boardwalk and played through the wood, the male alligators even repeated the B flat. It was also confirmed that it is only the mating male alligators who are attracted.
They are famously noisy during the spring (mating season), which could explain a link to the response to the B flat. Tim Williams, an alligator wrangler who guided the group, claims to have also heard gators respond to the sound of airboats.
A 15-year-old boy stole a giant Caterpillar earthmover and took it on a 12 mile joy ride through Tucson
In a final attempt to stop Dresner, police officers stood in front of the earthmover with their guns drawn. The earthmover reversed toward the officers, and they fired on it. A bullet hit Dresner in the spine and paralyzed him from the sternum down.
Dresner pleaded guilty to eight counts of endangerment. While Dresner and his attorneys argued that this was a stupid decision by an upset boy, police officers were infuriated by the fact that Dresner carelessly put so many citizens in danger on his joy ride.
The Devil's Kettle waterfall empties into a sinkhole. Nobody knows where that sinkhole leads to!
About 1.5 miles from the river's mouth, it split into two over a mass of rock. The eastern part flows over a 50 foot waterfall and continues on. The western flow falls 10 feet into a hole and then disappears into the ground. The source of this has yet to be found.
Some believe the water rejoins the river later or has a separate outlet to Lake Superior, but this has not been confirmed. Researchers have tried to locate the outlet by putting colored dyes and ping pong balls into the Devil's Kettle but to no avail. There is even a legend that a car disappeared into the sink hole but this is highly unlikely.
There are stars in the universe that are cold enough to be touched by the human hand!
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.
A student petitioned to make 10^27 a 'Hellameter' so that the universe would be 1.4 hellameters wide
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.
