Favorite mind-blowing facts

Tim Urban of the explainer site Wait By Why asked his Twitter followers “What’s your favorite mindblowing fact?” Sample replies:

• The moon and the sun are exactly the same size as seen from Earth

• Reno, Nevada is west of Los Angeles

• Neutrinos, subatomic particles created in the sun, are so neutral and small and that a wall of lead a light-year thick has 50/50 chance of stopping one. About 100 trillion of them pass through your body every second.

• There’s a giant volcano underneath Yellowstone National Park that would wipe out most life in North America if it were to explode (which it has done at least 3 times in the past that we know of).

• Every tool that exists today, from hammers to particle accelerators, has been constructed with others tools, and those with other tools, and so on, and eventually all tools where fabricated with rocks.

— MF