When mice live in the wild, they typically only live for about six months. This is mostly because they’re a good source of food for other animals. However, in a controlled environment, like being kept as a pet, they can live up to two years.
100 Mind-Blowing Source Facts
Not only plants photosynthesise. Algae (which are not plants) and some other organisms – including sea slugs and pea aphids – contain chlorophyll and can also take sunlight and turn it into an energy source.
If you ate nothing but rabbit meat, you would die from protein poisoning. Rabbit meat is extremely lean. Using it as a sole food source will leave you with too much protein and no fat, which is toxic for the body.
A pound of houseflies contains more protein than a pound of beef. Another little-known fact (Or maybe, just one we don’t want to acknowledge) about insects is that they are a very rich protein source. So much so, that sustainability advocates are calling for insects as a meat substitute.
Bananas get their curved shape by growing towards the sun. All bananas go through a process known as negative geotropism which indicates that they will grow towards the source of sunlight. This is also why it is rare to see a straight banana.
Around 50% of the mined gold on Earth comes from one source. This gold once came from a single plateau located in South Africa. This plateau is known as the Witwatersrand.
The flashes of light when you rub your eyes are called phosphenes. This phenomenon allows you to see light without any actual light source present. This occurs due to many possible sources like magnetic stimulation, or random firing of cells in the visual system.
Rainbows at night exist. These rainbows are called moonbows and they only occur when there is a source of water near a full moon. If the moon is in any other phase, the light will not be enough to cause a moonbow.
Turnips are high in Fibre. They are also a good source of vitamin C, Potassium, and Calcium. Turnips also help lower the risk of intestinal problems like diverticulitis.
There are more chickens in the world than there are people. Chickens are mainly bred primarily as a source of food. Others may keep them as pets as well.
The banana contains 75% water. Bananas are rich in nutrients and are a good source of electrolytes. Ideally, a person should eat at least one banana a day.
Scientists detected a radio signal in space from 5 billion light-years away. 5 billion light-years mean the Earth did not exist at the time the source transmitted it! How strange.
The movie influenced other filmmakers. Directors and filmmakers have cited “Schindler’s List” as a source of inspiration and a benchmark for cinematic storytelling.
The Milky Way smells of rum, raspberries and booze. In 2009, astronomers exploring a giant cloud of gas and dust at the centre of the Milky Way made a surprise discovery – the cloud was packed full of a chemical known as ethyl formate, which has a couple of intriguing properties: it is responsible for giving raspberries their flavour, and has the smell of rum. Another nearby region is also notable as it’s full of ethyl alcohol, or ethanol, the type we use to make alcoholic beverages. It contains enough alcohol to supply every person on the planet with 300,000 pints of beer per day for the next billion years! If bottled at the source, the proof for this beer would be very low, with an alcohol content of less than 1%, but as the cloud also contains plenty of other nasty chemicals, among them carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide, it would still leave you with quite a headache the next morning.
Sloths, moths and algae have a beneficial relationship: The pyralid moth is a species of moth that lives in the sloth’s fleece. There is also an algae species that grows in the grooved hair of the sloth. Scientists believe that the moth transports nutrient-rich waste from the sloth’s poop to fertilize the algae. In other words, the moths are algae farmers on the sloth’s back. And guess what else? The algae is a key source of food for the sloth!
The Tibetan plateau is Earth’s ‘third pole’. The Tibetan Plateau is often referred to as the ‘third pole’ owing to the amount of freshwater it contains. With over 46,000 glaciers, the Tibetan Plateau holds the largest reserve of freshwater outside of the North and South Poles. These glaciers feed the rivers that run through the region, including the Mekong, Yangtze, and Yellow Rivers, providing a vital source of water for millions of people in China and Southeast Asia. The Tibetan Plateau’s glaciers, along with other glaciers around the world, are under threat from climate change. Rising temperatures are causing the glaciers to melt at an unprecedented rate, which could have devastating consequences for the people and ecosystems that depend on them. New findings have found that values of ice lost from Himalayan glaciers from 2000 to 2020 were, on average, underestimated by 6.5%. This discovery has critical implications for predicting the demise of the region’s glaciers and for manageing critical water resources.
When they find a source of water, wild Bactrian (two-humped) camels will drink as much as 50 litres (88 pints). They will even drink salty water, unlike other mammals.
Nuclear energy is a zero-emission energy source.
There are 20,323,379 lines of code in the Linux kernel as of 2018. That might sound like a lot but it’s the smallest the kernel has been for some time! Even so, despite the recent reductions, the huge line count means Linux remains the single largest open-source project on the planet.
Linux is the most famous example of open source software but did you know that it wasn’t always that way? Early versions of Linux were distributed with a license forbidding commercial use or redistribution. It was version 0.12, released in 1992, that saw Linus adopt the GPL, making his code freely available to all.
Commercial Linux enterprise Red Hat is perhaps the first billion-dollar open-source company.
Unlike Windows and Mac, Linux is free and open-source (FOSS).
Linux Torvalds’ love for scuba diving led him to create an open-source platform designed to help divers in a wide variety of ways.
The Linux mascot “Tux” was created by Larry Ewing in 1996 and it’s also an open-source image. Happy 25th, Tux!
Linus Never Intended to Make Money Out of Linux: As a strong advocate for open-source software, Linux never intended to commercialize Linux. In fact, as a hobby project, Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, never envisioned making a profit from his groundbreaking operating system. When he started working on Linux in 1991, his primary motivation was to develop a free and open-source alternative to proprietary Unix systems. Torvalds released Linux under the GNU General Public License, ensuring that it would always remain open for anyone to use, modify, and distribute freely. This commitment to openness and collaboration led to rapid growth and popularity over the years to become one of the most essential operating systems in the IT world.
The First Commercial Linux Distribution: Yggdrasil is the first commercial Linux distribution and was released in Live CD format on 8, December 1992, offering a unique blend of open-source software and a user-friendly interface for sale, marking a significant milestone in the history of Linux. Yggdrasil incorporated the X Window System and provided a graphical user environment when Linux was primarily command-line-based. Although it faced competition from free Linux distributions, its pioneering approach paved the way for the commercialization of Linux and the development of more user-friendly distributions in the years that followed.
Linux Powers a Multitude of Devices: Nowadays, Linux runs on almost anything: servers, desktops, smartphones, smart watches, etc. Almost every hand-held device has a Linux kernel at the core of its operating system. Linux’s open-source nature allows developers to customise it for different devices and software needs, making it a widely used operating system in the world.
Linux on Every Major Space Station: Linux is used in every major Space Station including NASA, the International Space Station (ISS), and private space companies such as Space X. Its reliability and open-source adaptability makes it an ideal choice for critical systems, ensuring smooth operations and supporting astronauts in their endeavours beyond Earth’s boundaries.
Linux Market Share: Linux has gained ground as the third most popular desktop operating system, with a 2.92% market share as of October 2023, according to Statcounter. Beyond desktops, Linux’s reach extends further, serving as the backbone for a staggering 90% of the world’s cloud infrastructure. Its versatility, open-source nature, and robust performance have made it a prominent player both on personal computers and in the vast network of servers powering the digital services we rely on daily.
Acquisition of Red Hat: In July 2019, IBM finalized its acquisition of Red Hat, marking a significant milestone with a hefty investment of nearly $34 billion. Red Hat holds a prominent position as the leading Enterprise Linux distributor in the server market. This strategic move solidified IBM’s commitment to expanding its presence in the open-source software arena and harnessing Red Hat’s expertise to enhance its capabilities in providing enterprise solutions and cloud services.
When Torvalds Declined an Offer from Apple: In the early 2000s, a significant moment in tech history unfolded when Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple Inc., extended an offer to Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux kernel, inviting him to join Apple’s team and contribute to the development of OS X. However, Torvalds declined this enticing proposal. This decision ultimately solidified Torvalds’ dedication to the open-source principles of Linux and its community, as he continued to lead the development of the widely acclaimed Linux kernel.
Linux Trademark Dispute: A guy named William Della Croce Jr registered the name Linux and demanded royalty for using its name and mark. However, this contentious situation was ultimately resolved when Della Croce agreed to transfer the trademark to Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux. This transition secured Linux’s open-source status and ensured that its name and mark remained freely accessible, allowing the Linux community to continue flourishing and innovating without hindrance.
An Asteroid Named in Honor of Linus Torvalds: Linus Torvalds, the renowned creator of the Linux kernel, received a unique and celestial honour when an asteroid was named after him. This astronomical recognition symbolizes his significant contributions to the world of open-source software and technology. The asteroid named “9793 Torvalds” serves as a testament to Torvalds’ enduring impact on the tech industry and the global community of Linux enthusiasts, solidifying his legacy not only on Earth but also among the stars.
Linux Visual Effects in Titanic and Avatar: For those who doubt Linux’s capabilities in animation, consider this: the Oscar-winning visual effects of James Cameron’s legendary film “Titanic” were crafted using Linux-powered machines. Even more impressively, “Avatar“, Cameron’s groundbreaking 3D cinematic masterpiece, marked the last movie to be entirely developed on a Linux platform using Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) applications.
Cost of Redeveloping the Linux Kernel: Redeveloping version 2.6.0 of the Linux kernel in a traditional, non-open source way was estimated to cost around $612 million in 2004. Another study in 2006, funded by the European Union, suggested that redoing version 2.6.8 would be even more expensive, at about $1.14 billion. These estimates show how much money could be saved by using the open-source approach of developing Linux.
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