Why do we dream?

Two different schools of thought exist as to why we dream: the physiological school, and the psychological school. Both, however, agree that we dream during the REM, or rapid eye movement, phase of sleep. During this phase of sleep, our closed eyes dart rapidly about and our brain activity peaks.

The physiological theory centres upon how our brains function during the REM phase. Those who believe this theory say that we dream to exercise the brain cells. When awake, our brains constantly transmit and and recieve messages and keep our bodies in perpeutal motion. Dreams repace this function.

Psychological theorists of dreams focus upon our thoughts and emotions, and say that dreams deal with immediate concerns in our lives, such as unfinished business from the day. Connections between dreams and the human psyche have been made for thousands of years. The Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote in his Parva Naturalia, over 2,200 years ago, of a connection between dreams and emotional needs. Sweet dreams!

What are falling stars?

Contrary to popular belief, 'falling(or shooting) stars' are not stars at all, but meteors, solid bodies that travel trough space. Meteours are huge objects weighing many tons, which are visible to the naked eye at night. Most meteors, except the really huge ones, burn up when they enter the Earth's atmosphere. If they do land successfully, they are renamed meteorites.

Usually meteors travel together in swarms like bees. Nature's spectacular fireworks show, a 'meteor shower', comes into view when these swarms hit the Earth's atmosphere and the fall towards the Earth in a brilliant display of light. One must be quite patient to witness the most spectaculars meteor storms, as these cross the Earth's path only once every 33 years.

What would happen if the gravity on Earth was suddenly turned off?


Supposing we could magically turn off gravity. Would buildings and other structures float away? :D What happend would depend on how strongly the things were attached to the Earth. The Earth is rotating at quite a speed. If you spin something around your head on a string it goes around in a circle until you let go of the string. Then it files off a straight line. 'Switching off' gravity would be like letting go of the string. Things not attached to the Earth would fly off in a straight line. People in buildings would suddenly shoot upwards at a great speed until they hit the ceiling. Most things outside would fly into space. Some things, like trees and many buildings, which are rooted into the Earth, would not find it so easy to fly off.

Why do aeroplans take longer to fly west than east?

It can take five hours to go west-east from New York to London, but seven hours to travel east-west from London to New York. The reasons for the difference is an atmospheric phenomenon.The jet stream is a very high altitude wind which always blows from the west to the east across the Atlantic. The planes moving at a constant air speed thus go faster in the west-east direction when they are moving with the wind that in the opposite direction.


What would happen if there was no dust?

Most of us who have ever cleaned a house would be much happier if there was less dust. :D However, without dust there would be less rainfall and sunsets would be less beautiful. Rain is formed when water molecules in the air collect around particles of dust. When the collected water becomes heavy enough. Thus water vapour would be much less likely to rain without the dust particles.

The water vapour and dust particles also reflect the rays of the sun. At sunrise and sunset, when the sun is bellow the horizon, the dust and water vapour molecus reflect longer, red rays of light in such a way that we can see them for more time. The more dust particles in the air, the more colourful the sunrise or sunset.

What is the origin of the @ symbol?

History tells us that the little @ in email addresses, commonly referred to as the 'at sight', stemmed from the tired hands of medieval monks. During the Middle Ages, before the invention of priting presses, every letter of a word had to be painstakingly transcribed by hand in Latin for each copy of a book. The monks that performed there tedious copying duties looked for ways to reduce the number od individual strokes for common words. Althought the word ad, the Latin word for at, is quite short, it was so common that the monks thought it would be quicker and easier to shorten it even more. As a result, they looped the 'd' around the 'a' and eliminated two strokes of the pen.

With the introducion of email the popularity of the @ symbol grew. There is no one universal name for the sign but the countries have found diffrent ways to describe it. Several languages use words that associate the shape with some type of animal. These include:

majmunche Macedonian for 'little monkey'
snabel Danish for 'elephant's trunk'
klammeraffe German for 'hanging monkey'
papaki Greek for 'little duck'
kukac Hungarian for 'worm'
dalphaengi Korean for 'snail'
grisehale Norwegian for 'pig's tail'
sobachka Russian for 'little dog'