Real Life Sea Serpent - The Oarfish

Believed to be the backing behind many 'sea serpent' theories and stories, the Oarfish is an extremely large and long fish found in the Pelagic zone of seas or lakes. They are very rarely seen, despite being found in all temperate and tropical oceans. Just to stress, these things are freaking scary, look at this thing:

Source: National Geographic

Most of the Oarfish every seen have been found washed ashore, or floating on the seas surface dying. In fact there has only every been one sighting of the Oarfish in its natural habitat, which was discovered by scientists in 2008. The fish observed was estimated to be between 5-10m in length, and if you thought a dead Oarfish was unsettling, look at this footage of a live one:

In other news, recently 2 of these beasts have been found washed up on the shore in California, an extremely rare occurrence. Some locals even believe the Oarfish sightings could be an indication of an earthquake, but there's no telling for sure, and Geologists don't agree with this theory. The fishes found on Santa Catalina Island were 4.3m and 5.5m in length, which is nothing compared to their maximum size of up to 15m! There's no denying that these strange elongated fish are something to be marvelled at.

The Scale of the Universe

Not often contemplated by the average man is the scale of the universe we are living in. "It's a small world." is a well known quote, song and painfully boring Disney ride, however it's somewhat of an understatement. The real phrase should be, "It's an incredibly minute world." simply because, well, it is. Our earth may seem big to us, heck, even London seems huge to me even though its a rather average sized city in comparison, but in reality it is not. You most likely learnt in primary school, or in some physics lesson, that the Earth on which we live could fit inside The Sun around 1,000,000 times. Already we can barely comprehend the size The Sun must be. It seems small when we look at it in the sky, usually a ball no bigger than a 5 pence piece, however in retrospect it looks something more like this:

from Visual Learning Systems 

 So yeah that's a little scary. But that's only the start, you see. The Sun, one star in the billions in our Galaxy is not huge either. Its roughly average size, maybe a little on the small side. There are stars much bigger, and that's what's even more interesting. In this image here (too high resolution to properly show here) we can see that The Sun, 109 times bigger than Earth, is a mere singular pixel in the photo. We then compare that to the biggest star in the photo, VY Canis Majoris, and we have no words. Then you read this and I tell you that VY Canis Majoris is actually not the biggest star we no of. The award goes to complexly and lovingly named  R136a1. R136a1 is the single largest star known to man, and has a luminosity of almost 8,700,000 times that of The Sun. Its roughly 265 solar masses, which is a unit of measure meaning that it is 265 times the mass of our Sun (which happens to be two nonillion kilograms). That's rather heavy. Thinking about all this hurts, and it hurts even more when you realise that there is not only 1 Galaxy, there are billions and trillions, and these billions and trillions of Galaxies, filled with billions and trillions of stars and planets, clump together to make Super Clusters.

Super Clusters near to earth - From Wikipedia 

The idea of how small we are is actually somewhat painful. No longer will we be able to roam around like we own the place, well we do own the place but the place happens to be horrendously minuscule in the grand scale of things. After trying to comprehend all this your brain should be slightly aching, if its not I haven't tried hard enough informing you, but if it is, I know that feeling, bro. Like I said before, it's not a 'Small World', it's an incredibly minute world.

5 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Potatoes

There are few vegetables in this world that are as versatile as the beloved potato. Mashed, fried, sautéed, boiled, baked, roasted, wedged, or French fried - the potato will find some way of making you love it every time. However, other than being a starchy staple of the average man's life, the splendid spud is host to many secrets that will mash your mind.

1) Potatoes are poisonous - You heard me correctly. The much loved veg that we all enjoy is actually capable of making us very ill. The plant contains toxic compounds known as glycoalkaloids in the stem and leaves. The potato itself can also turn green when left for a while, as a result of a high concentration of the glycoalkaloid poison. Although it is rare for potato poisining to occur, it does occasionally happen. Death normally occurs after a stage of weakness and confusion, followed by a coma.

2) Potatoes are from the same family as the Deadly Nightshade - The potato is part of the Solanaceae family (don't ask me how to pronounce it, I honestly haven't the foggiest), which the Atropa belladonna (Deadly Nightshade) plant is also a member of. The Nightshade is one of the most toxic plants found in the Eastern Hemisphere, with 8-10 of its berries being fatal if ingested. Scary stuff.

Blue Swede - Potato Variety

3) There are close to 4000 different varieties of potato - ...and you thought they were versatile enough already! Potatoes are usually categorised into groups of: russets, reds,whites, yellows and purples, based on their common characteristics.

4) Some potatoes are BLUE - Blue (or purple) potatoes originated in South America. The skin is purple, becoming blue when cooked. Looks rather unappetising, however the variety, known as 'Cream of the Crop' has proved popular in Ireland.

5) Potatoes are used to brew Vodka - Though this is probably more well known than some of the other facts included here, this is also quite interesting, and unexpected from a seemingly innocent vegetable! The potato is high in starch, which, when put through a series of processes, is broken down into sugars, and then into ethanol (alcohol) and used in Vodka, Potcheen and Akvavit.

Gotta love potatoes.

5 Places on Earth You've Probably Never Heard Of

The world. It's big, and bad, and good, and cool, and interesting. However the average person, even the intelligent person, knows only a tiny bit about the hidden mysteries and wondrous places on the Earth we live. Here are five places you probably haven't heard of, and will probably want to have heard about. They're damn weird. 

1. Socotra

The Isolated Island of Socotra, 200 miles from mainland Yemen. I'd heard of Yemen about once before discovering this, let alone of Socotra. The Island of Socotra is hot, harsh and windswept, and yet it is home to some of the most unique and wonderful animals and plants. How something as extraordinary as this can go unnoticed is beyond me, but there's the Media and Education System for you. Its like an alien realm, hidden away on earth.

2) Sedlec Ossuary, Czech Republic 

Okay.. so this is located in a cavern under a church in Prague, and is possibly the most disturbing thing I've ever seen. The Sedlec Ossuary boasts bones from between 40,000 - 70,000 people, and has been featured in a few films! 'House of 1,000 Corpses' used the fear inspiring Ossuary as inspiration for its 'Satans Lair'. I'd love to see an episode of Most Haunted filmed here, Yvette Fielding would probably break down into tears.

3) Hell's Door, Turkmenistan

This glowing crater is found in the Kara-Kum desert in Turkmenistan, and was allegedly created when Soviet prospectors drilled into a large chamber filled with natural gases. The story goes that the prospectors eventually decided to light the gas rather than to risk a build up of concentrated gas, and there you have it!  Some people even call it The Gate to Hell. The inside of the crater is black from carbon building up, and the heat is so intense that its impossible to stand by the edge for more than a few minutes.

4) Pamukkale, Turkey

The strange, yet beautiful pools of Pumakkale were discovered and first appreciated over 2,000 years ago, yet their are origin are still unknown. One theory is that, earthquakes created hot springs to bring water containing calcium carbonate to the surface. When this water evaporated, the chalky material was left behind and as a result slowly built layer upon layer, eventually creating this wonder of the natural world.

5) Bouvet Island

Not the most interesting of places, considering its only inhabitants are lichens, penguins and seals, and the most amazing thing on it is a ruined weather station, but nevertheless.. Bouvet Island is the worlds most remote island, probably why no one's heard of it. It also is a part of Norway officially, and actually has its own internet domain! (.bv). Most of the film Alien vs Predator was also filmed on the island, but other than that there's completely nothing of interest!

The world is an interesting and marvellous place, when making this post I realised this even more than before. I hope to have given you at least the slightest bit of interest when reading this post, as I myself got sidetracked for about a week looking at Socotra alone..