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1. The best way to retain information according to several studies is to take a few days’ break between learning sessions. Don't cram. Study, skip a couple of days, then review and study some more. Also, don’t just read- quiz yourself (flash cards, etc.). Quizzes seem to help you retain more information.
2. Blowing out birthday candles on a cake is apparently kind of gross. Generally in doing this you’re spraying bacteria from your mouth all over the cake, although how much is very person-dependent; some people are much neater about it than others. Evidently there was a video of Mitt Romney picking up each candle off a cake and blowing them out one by one, and everyone thought this was really weird. Frankly, it still is, but it turns out it is also notably more hygienic.
3. The interiors of neutron stars are, as the name implies, a mass of neutrons, all compressed very tightly. Normal neutrons are made of up and down quarks, like most matter (all quarks are of the following types- up, down, top, bottom, strange, charm). Scientists speculate that it’s possible that some of these quarks could get squashed in such a way that they turn into strange quarks. If strange quarks are not contained within the neutron star, which could happen if the star was ripped open by a black hole or another neutron star companion, the strange quarks could turn every other quark they encounter into strange quarks. Chunks of strange quarks (called ‘strangelets’, endearingly) could be flying through the Universe as we speak, and if one hit the Earth, it would quickly turn everything into strange quarks, which we assume will effectively destroy everything. If one hits the Sun, it will end the Sun’s effectiveness as our life-giving star. We have no way of detecting this and no way of avoiding it. Sleep well! There’s a possibility that the mysterious dark matter that makes up a large fraction of the mass of the Universe is made of strange quarks from either neutron stars, strangelets, or from the initial Big Bang.
2. Blowing out birthday candles on a cake is apparently kind of gross. Generally in doing this you’re spraying bacteria from your mouth all over the cake, although how much is very person-dependent; some people are much neater about it than others. Evidently there was a video of Mitt Romney picking up each candle off a cake and blowing them out one by one, and everyone thought this was really weird. Frankly, it still is, but it turns out it is also notably more hygienic.
3. The interiors of neutron stars are, as the name implies, a mass of neutrons, all compressed very tightly. Normal neutrons are made of up and down quarks, like most matter (all quarks are of the following types- up, down, top, bottom, strange, charm). Scientists speculate that it’s possible that some of these quarks could get squashed in such a way that they turn into strange quarks. If strange quarks are not contained within the neutron star, which could happen if the star was ripped open by a black hole or another neutron star companion, the strange quarks could turn every other quark they encounter into strange quarks. Chunks of strange quarks (called ‘strangelets’, endearingly) could be flying through the Universe as we speak, and if one hit the Earth, it would quickly turn everything into strange quarks, which we assume will effectively destroy everything. If one hits the Sun, it will end the Sun’s effectiveness as our life-giving star. We have no way of detecting this and no way of avoiding it. Sleep well! There’s a possibility that the mysterious dark matter that makes up a large fraction of the mass of the Universe is made of strange quarks from either neutron stars, strangelets, or from the initial Big Bang.
