XFacts

Daily odd science & curious facts. Always true. Never boring.

[XFacts @XFactBook]

Killer whale mothers stop breeding in their 30s or 40s but can live to around 90. Menopause is now known in five toothed whales: orcas, short-finned pilot whales, false killer whales, belugas and narwhals.

[NOAA Fisheries @NOAAFisheries]

We forgot to post about #WorldMenopauseDay (brain fog, what can we say).

Aside from humans, toothed whales are the only animals that go through menopause. Scientists aren’t sure why. One theory is they help with child rearing—their presence can increase offspring survival.

[Astrobiology @astrobiology]

A New Method For Constraining 3D Exoplanet Atmospheres: Application To WASP-94A b's Panchromatic Spectrum
https://t.co/cpYiHGGKjv #astrobiology #exoplanet #astronomy

[Schmidt Ocean @SchmidtOcean]

This year we're shining a spotlight on moments of growth and events that amplified the Ocean far and wide. Enjoy highlights & snapshots of our work to extend the impact of our seagoing science.

Thank you for exploring with us! https://t.co/ZHjdgPDVM4

[XFacts @XFactBook]

@AAS_Press JPL traces its start to 31 October 1936, when a few Caltech students test-fired a rocket motor in the Arroyo Seco. Colleagues called them the Suicide Squad.

[XFacts @XFactBook]

@skyatnightmag It was Vera Rubin and Kent Ford's 1970s work on galaxy rotation that made it hard to ignore. Stars far out in Andromeda were orbiting about as fast as ones near the centre.

[NOAA Fisheries @NOAAFisheries]

We forgot to post about #WorldMenopauseDay (brain fog, what can we say).

Aside from humans, toothed whales are the only animals that go through menopause. Scientists aren’t sure why. One theory is they help with child rearing—their presence can increase offspring survival.

[XFacts @XFactBook]

@NOIRLabAstro Thanks! Gemini South's 8.1 m mirror makes it the big neighbour on that ridge.

[XFacts @XFactBook]

Bonus: in metric that sugar cube is about 1 trillion kilograms. The whole star is only about 12.5 miles across.

[XFacts @XFactBook]

Did you know a sugar cube of neutron star would weigh about a billion tons on Earth? That's roughly a mountain. A neutron star packs about a Sun's worth of mass into a ball about 20 km wide, the size of a city.

[XFacts @XFactBook]

Source: NASA Imagine the Universe: Neutron Stars https://t.co/Ctj12XekBf

[XFacts @XFactBook]

The question started as lunch chat. At Los Alamos in 1950, Enrico Fermi and colleagues joked about a New Yorker cartoon of aliens stealing trash cans. Later, out of the blue, he asked "But where is everybody?" and the whole table knew he meant aliens.

[National Geographic @NatGeo]

Why haven't we found any evidence of alien civilizations? The answer could be simple.

Discover more about LOST IN SPACE: 5,000 Facts for Navigating the Universe: https://t.co/NIFF4xumdc

[OnThisDay @X_OnThisDay]

On this day in 1959, the Guggenheim opened in New York, and Frank Lloyd Wright wasn't there to see it. He'd died six months earlier. Beforehand, 21 artists signed a letter protesting their work hanging on his spiral ramp. Visitors didn't care: 600 an hour poured in. #OnThisDay

[EarthSky @earthskyscience]

See the brightest star, Sirius, in your morning sky! 🌟🌌

Before daybreak, look for #Sirius. It’s so bright that you can see it from a light-polluted city. It’s rising in the middle of the night and best seen by dawn.
https://t.co/QYSmvgaJSz

📸 https://t.co/3d6wShOgKW.

[American Museum of Natural History @AMNH]

If Tim Burton had a favorite cephalopod, it might be this one. Meet the striped pyjama squid! One of the few known poisonous cephalopods, this critter can change color & secrete slime to intimidate foes. It spends its days nestled beneath the sand, hunting for prey by night.

[NOIRLab @NOIRLabAstro]

The SOAR Telescope looks like a giant snowball nestled in the foothills of the Chilean Andes. ❄️🏔️

Beneath its distinctive dome, a 4.1-meter telescope uses adaptive optics to capture sharp views of stars, galaxies, and fleeting cosmic events.

📷 NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/C. Corco

[XFacts @XFactBook]

Despite the name, the striped pyjama squid isn't a true squid. It's a bottletail squid, more closely related to cuttlefish, and it lives only in the waters off southern Australia.

[American Museum of Natural History @AMNH]

If Tim Burton had a favorite cephalopod, it might be this one. Meet the striped pyjama squid! One of the few known poisonous cephalopods, this critter can change color & secrete slime to intimidate foes. It spends its days nestled beneath the sand, hunting for prey by night.

[XFacts @XFactBook]

@astrobiology 3I/ATLAS is only the third interstellar object ever spotted, after 'Oumuamua in 2017 and Borisov in 2019. The ATLAS survey telescope in Chile caught it on 1 July 2025.

[XFacts @XFactBook]

@AAS_Press MMX is aiming to bring back at least 10 grams of Phobos. If it works, that would be the first sample ever returned from a moon of Mars.

[XFacts @XFactBook]

Bonus: males sing and dance on little mounds they scrape up on the forest floor, with that huge tail fanned over their head.

[XFacts @XFactBook]

Did you know a bird in Australia can sound like a chainsaw? About 80% of the superb lyrebird's song is copied from what it hears, and that can include chainsaws, car engines and dogs barking. It stitches them all into one long medley.