FAST FACTS – A fun way to sharpen your general knowledge.

The long and the short of it

Predicting a child’s height will be more accurate after a new study led by Australian scientists.

Dr Loic Yengo and Professor Peter Visscher, from the University of Queensland, worked with 600 researchers in one of the largest-ever genome-wide studies, published in the journal Nature. Dr Yengo says a child’s height is normally predicted using their two biological parents’ average height. But paediatricians will be able to better estimate this using the unlocked data.

“It will put parents’ minds at ease if children are growing as their genes predict, or it will trigger further medical investigation and help pick up potential issues sooner,” he said.

– AAP There are fossilised plants in Greenland 1.4 kilometres under ice. The Greenland Ice Sheet covers around 80 per cent of the country. It is thought to be the only relic of the Pleistocene glaciation in the northern hemisphere. In 1966 researchers took a core sample and found well-preserved fossil plants and biomolecules. This means the sheet melted and reformed at least once in the past million years. By the numbers 17

One day on Uranus is about 17 hours.

1100 0.3% 0.3 per cent of the solar energy that Thomas Edison patented almost could be absorbed by the Sahara is 1100 inventions in his lifetime. enough to power the whole of Europe.

Floppy disks were a type of data storage medium that appeared in the 1970s. The first was the eight-inch floppy disc, capable of storing 80 kilobytes of data. As the disks got smaller, their storage capacity grew and by the mid-1980s the 3.5-inch floppy disk was able to store 1.44 MB. Floppy disks were vulnerable to magnets and heat, and easily corrupted. By the 1990s software size meant many disks were required for most applications (for example, Adobe Photoshop required over a dozen disks to run) so CD-ROMs began to take over.

Today in history – October 20

1962 – War breaks out between India and China over the Himalayan border. The month-long Sino-Indian war began after the Chinese launched a two-pronged attack. During the duration of hostilities, China and India did not officially declare war on each other nor cut off any diplomatic ties. The conflict ended with China taking control of Aksai Chin and both countries accepting a de facto border along what is now known as the Line of Actual Control. 1973 – Sydney Opera House opens its doors. The iconic building, which was declared as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, was designed by Danish architect Jørn Utzon. Construction on the performing arts center began in March 1959 and cost $102 million.

Word of the day

Bombinate

To make a sustained, murmuring sound similar to a buzz or drone.

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