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Perseverance has traveled almost 26 miles on Mars—nearly a marathon

After more than five years on Mars, Perseverance has covered almost 26 miles (42 kilometers), just shy of the official marathon distance of 26.2 miles, while collecting 27 rock cores and abrading 62 rocks.

A 4,000-year-old cuneiform tablet records one of the earliest known beer receipts.

Among the recently decoded cuneiform tablets stored at the National Museum of Denmark is a record as mundane as a beer receipt. These clay tablets, written in the ancient Middle East, show that everyday administration like tracking supplies was already in practice thousands of years ago.

Archaeologists tested if ancient hole belts could act as refrigerators.

By placing 10°C chicken meat in a pottery jar inside a recreated hole, researchers found the temperature rose only to about 12°C on a 20°C day. This suggests the holes might have helped keep food cool, especially in colder seasons.

The Sun contains about 99.8% of all the mass in our solar system.

The Sun is not just the biggest object in the solar system — it completely dominates it. NASA says the Sun contains about 99.8% of the total mass of the solar system. That means all the planets, moons, asteroids, comets, and dwarf planets together make up only a tiny remaining fraction. This is why the Sun’s gravity controls the motion of everything from Mercury to distant icy objects far beyond Neptune.

A day on Venus is longer than a year on Venus.

Venus takes about 243 Earth days to rotate once, but only about 225 Earth days to orbit the Sun.

The Sahara was a lush green savanna 6,000 years ago.

Pollen records and rock art show the world’s largest hot desert was once dotted with lakes, grasslands, and giraffes. A small wobble in Earth’s orbit shifted the African monsoon south, drying it out in under a thousand years.

Russia spans eleven time zones, from Kaliningrad to Kamchatka.

When it’s breakfast in Moscow, fishermen on the Pacific coast are already heading to bed. France is technically a close second — with its overseas territories, it covers twelve.

Africa is so vast you could fit the US, China, and India inside it — with room to spare.

Mercator projections shrink Africa dramatically. The real continent covers 30.3 million km² — larger than the US, China, India, Mexico, Peru, France, Spain, Papua New Guinea, Sweden, Japan, Germany, Norway, Italy, New Zealand, the UK, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Greece, combined.

Perseverance has traveled almost 26 miles on Mars—nearly a marathon

After more than five years on Mars, Perseverance has covered almost 26 miles (42 kilometers), just shy of the official marathon distance of 26.2 miles, while collecting 27 rock cores and abrading 62 rocks.

A 4,000-year-old cuneiform tablet records one of the earliest known beer receipts.

Among the recently decoded cuneiform tablets stored at the National Museum of Denmark is a record as mundane as a beer receipt. These clay tablets, written in the ancient Middle East, show that everyday administration like tracking supplies was already in practice thousands of years ago.

Archaeologists tested if ancient hole belts could act as refrigerators.

By placing 10°C chicken meat in a pottery jar inside a recreated hole, researchers found the temperature rose only to about 12°C on a 20°C day. This suggests the holes might have helped keep food cool, especially in colder seasons.

The Sun contains about 99.8% of all the mass in our solar system.

The Sun is not just the biggest object in the solar system — it completely dominates it. NASA says the Sun contains about 99.8% of the total mass of the solar system. That means all the planets, moons, asteroids, comets, and dwarf planets together make up only a tiny remaining fraction. This is why the Sun’s gravity controls the motion of everything from Mercury to distant icy objects far beyond Neptune.

A day on Venus is longer than a year on Venus.

Venus takes about 243 Earth days to rotate once, but only about 225 Earth days to orbit the Sun.

The Sahara was a lush green savanna 6,000 years ago.

Pollen records and rock art show the world’s largest hot desert was once dotted with lakes, grasslands, and giraffes. A small wobble in Earth’s orbit shifted the African monsoon south, drying it out in under a thousand years.

Russia spans eleven time zones, from Kaliningrad to Kamchatka.

When it’s breakfast in Moscow, fishermen on the Pacific coast are already heading to bed. France is technically a close second — with its overseas territories, it covers twelve.

Africa is so vast you could fit the US, China, and India inside it — with room to spare.

Mercator projections shrink Africa dramatically. The real continent covers 30.3 million km² — larger than the US, China, India, Mexico, Peru, France, Spain, Papua New Guinea, Sweden, Japan, Germany, Norway, Italy, New Zealand, the UK, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Greece, combined.