The universe is that old. The Earth is much younger, at a sprightly 4.5 billion years.

It is slightly flattened at the poles due to the effects of its rotation and gravity. That means it is an oblate spheroid.

This one is amazingly counter-intuitive. It all comes down to the fact that the first pair only have a 1 in 364 chance of sharing a birthday, then as you add people, the numbers change until at the 23rd, person, it's more than 1 in 2.

The cashew apple is edible and the nut grows out of its base. Try some cashew apple juice for a high energy drink with plenty of protein and good fats!

It actually depends on your age and fat content. Babies are up to 75% water but adults are only 55-60% water.

That's why it's a bit silly when we get hung up on differences between us, considering that any two humans are overwhelmingly alike when you compare us to literally any other living thing. It's not just hippie talk to say we really are all the same!

Minerals in water conduct electricity. Purified water would actually serve as insulation.

You use all of your brain, but not all at the same time or in the same way. Some of your brain's weight is actually insulation of other parts of your brain - but you're still using it. Other parts are used more of less often.

You can't actually see it from space. The first Chinese astronaut up there was not popular when he discovered this.

Goldfish can definitely remember things like where to find food, so this is not true.

As anyone who has ever put a lightning conductor on their roof knows, lightning can strike the same place many, many times.

It will only do this if it is inside a human, but yes, you can re-grow your liver. That means if someone you know needs a liver, you should definitely give them some!

"Theory" is a bad word for scientists to use, really, because it means a different thing in science. It means a hypothesis (a guess) that has since been proven correct by a mountain of evidence. Laypeople who say, "It's just a theory" about scientific theories are using the word wrong.

The moon rotates around the Earth so the same side always faces us, but that doesn't mean the other side never sees the sun: it does, we just don't see that happening because we only see one side. The moon therefore has a FAR side, not a DARK side.

They look like they grow because your skin shrinks onto your body and makes them stick out a little more. Creepy, huh?

You have loads of other senses: balance, direction, temperature, etc.

About 108 billion people have ever lived. About 7 billion are alive now. Population growth for the win!

The longest-living shark recorded was 272. That is not to say a Greenland shark could never live 500 years, only to say that none has come close, as far as we know.

Neutron stars are stars that collapsed in on themselves. They are really, really dense. A tiny little piece of one thus weighs a very ridiculous amount.

It's true! The area of a circle is the radius squared, multiplied by Pi. The radius is half the diameter. So an 18" pizza has a 9" radius. That means the area is just over 254 square inches. A 12" pizza has a 6" diameter, for an area of just over 113 square inches. Two such pizzas have an area of 226 square inches, which is smaller than 254! Order the big pie, is what we're saying.

There are 400 billion stars in our galaxy, but there are three trillion trees on our planet!

Venus has a day (one rotation on its axis) that is nearly 243 days, but its year (once round the Sun) is only 225 days. So its year is shorter than its day.

It sounds too good to be true, but it's not. Jupiter is a gaseous planet with lots of methane in the atmosphere to provide carbon. When it gets too low down, the amazing gravity levels squash the carbon into diamonds. It literally rains diamonds there.

This is true and it is why horses are very vulnerable to colic. Never get a horse drunk, either!

It's true! If you squeeze a wet towel you will see the same thing, the water just hovers around the towel and refuses to go anywhere.

It does work, weird though it seems. It's not clear whether gorillas get any of the same potential side effects, whether the good ones (improved mood and complexion) or bad ones (weight gain and depressed mood).

Male seahorses are really showing up for equality. They take the fertilized egg back from the mother and carry it to term.

Actually, wolf packs are an extended family led by a female and male pair. The two are equally in charge. "Alpha males" are not a real thing in nature, they only exist when wolves are in captivity and start behaving in ways they have never been observed to behave in the wild.

The Voyager probe is actually 11.7 billion miles away, and it still sends us back all sorts of information.

You can, but its insides won't come out, or if they do, they won't leak away from the egg. This is because of the 2.8x atmospheres of pressure down there.

It's true, and you can test it right now by making one. Cut a strip of paper, twist it once, then tape the ends together. Take a Sharpie and draw a continuous line, never taking it up from the paper. You will finish that line back where you started.

Actually, female sharks have thicker skins than male. It is believed it is because male sharks bite during mating!

Babies' bones fuse from about 270 at birth to the 206 they have when they are all grown up!

Mercury behaves very differently to other metals due to the nature of the bonds between its neutrons.

They can be up to 4'7" and run from the base of the spinal cord to the toe!