12 Surprising Science Facts You'll Learn From Our Quizzes

Science has a reputation for being intimidating. But when you break it into bite-sized facts, most of science is just "wait, that is real?" on repeat. We have written dozens of science quizzes, and every single one has taught us something that felt impossible until we triple-checked the sources.

Here are twelve of the most surprising science facts that show up in our quizzes — plus where to test yourself on each one.

Space Facts That Make Earth Feel Tiny

1. A day on Venus is longer than its year.

Venus rotates so slowly that one rotation takes 243 Earth days. But it orbits the Sun in just 225 Earth days. So if you lived on Venus, your birthday would come before noon. Our Solar System Deep Dive is full of quirks like this.

2. There is a planet where it rains glass sideways.

HD 189733b, an exoplanet 63 light years away, has winds of 5,400 mph and silicate clouds that condense into tiny glass particles. Welcome to weather forecasting in the exoplanet era.

3. Mars has the largest volcano in the solar system.

Olympus Mons is about 2.5 times taller than Mount Everest and roughly the size of France at its base. Test your Martian knowledge on the Mars Deep Dive.

Your Body Is Weirder Than You Think

4. Your stomach produces a new lining every three to four days.

Otherwise the acid would digest your stomach itself. Your entire stomach lining gets completely replaced about twice a week.

5. You have four sets of tonsils.

Most people only know about the two obvious ones, but there are also adenoids at the back of the nose and lingual tonsils at the base of the tongue.

6. Your bones are stronger than steel by weight.

Pound for pound, bone is about five times stronger than steel. It is also alive — constantly remodeling based on the forces applied to it.

"The human body replaces about 330 billion cells every single day. You are, in a very real sense, not the same person you were a year ago."

Animal and Dinosaur Surprises

7. Sharks are older than trees.

Sharks appeared around 450 million years ago. The first trees evolved around 385 million years ago. The ancestors of great whites were patrolling the oceans 65 million years before the first forest existed.

8. Tyrannosaurus rex lived closer to us than to Stegosaurus.

T. rex roamed about 66 million years ago. Stegosaurus died out around 150 million years ago. That means Stegosaurus and T. rex are separated by more time than T. rex and you. Our Dinosaur Deep Dive has plenty more of these.

Physics and Chemistry Stuff You Probably Missed

9. Hot water can freeze faster than cold water.

Called the Mpemba effect, this phenomenon has been observed in labs for decades, though the exact mechanism is still debated. Evaporation, dissolved gases, and convection all play a role.

10. A teaspoon of neutron star weighs around six billion tons.

Neutron stars are so dense that a single sugar cube of their material would outweigh every human on Earth combined.

11. Helium is the only element that will never solidify at normal pressure.

No matter how cold you get helium at standard pressure, it stays a liquid. You need to squeeze it at enormous pressure to force it into a solid.

12. There are more possible chess games than atoms in the observable universe.

Estimates put the atom count around 10^80 and possible chess games closer to 10^120. Every chess match is, in some sense, unprecedented in the history of the universe.

Want to test yourself on facts like these? Jump into the Astronomy Deep Dive or our broader science category and see how many you already knew.