Despite the pandemic situation and multiply lockdowns around the world, 2020 was full of many scientific discoveries that helped us to understand better or completely changed our understanding of the world.

Science drives humanity forward. Modern scientific researches help people to effectively advance in a continuous process of updating knowledge, concepts, and ideas, which, as a result, leads to the formation of a new scientific model of the world.

Online trivia and science quizzes are one of the types of interactive gaming technologies that can be a great way to test your knowledge of science facts and scientific principles.

The most curious facts that were told about in 2020

01. Revealed the mystery of a strange phenomenon: octopuses punch fish. But why? As it turned out, for a reason. First of all, because octopuses cooperate with some species of fish to hunt smaller fish and other marine life. Octopuses lead them to battle and, like “generals”, move fish that are “out of order” with their tentacles.

02. People have become … colder in the last 200 years. Scientists have found that the average body temperature of healthy people has dropped by almost 0.6 degrees over the past 200 years – from 37 degrees Celsius to 36.4. And those who live far from civilization have become “colder” by half a degree in just the last 16 years.

03. The brains of lonely people work in a special way. It turned out that the less a person communicates, the more actively the so-called default system of the brain works: this system is “responsible” for complex thought processes like memories, planning the future, or presenting hypothetical scenarios.

04. For cancer prevention, it is best to exercise in the morning rather than in the evening. Scientists explain it this way: the “sleep hormone” melatonin helps prevent the development of cancer cells. And sports before bedtime can interfere with falling asleep – and then a person will receive less of this necessary melatonin.

05. Not all Vikings were what they are portrayed in the movies – fair-haired northerners. More than half of the Vikings had non-Scandinavian “impurities” in the genotype: scientists discovered genes characteristic of the inhabitants of southern Europe, the British Isles and even Asia. So there were dark-haired and curly-haired Vikings.

06. The dog enjoys the back of your head no less than your face (if, of course, this dog knows you well). Because in dogs, unlike humans, ears play an important role in transmitting mood; so the dogs pay attention to them. Well, the ears are only slightly less visible from the back than from the front.

07. Transport exhausts make bees forgetful. They are less efficient at remembering odors and are less efficient at collecting nectar. Therefore, to save bees (and there are fewer of them all over the world) it is not enough to give up pesticides and other chemicals, you also need to fight the abundance of cars on gasoline and diesel.

08. There is a bacteria that feeds on plastic! It was found by German scientists. They concluded that this species appeared relatively recently: apparently, bacteria evolved, having learned to feed on this seemingly inedible material.

Perhaps it is this bacterium that will save humanity from the risk of drowning in polyurethane waste, one of the most difficult to recycle types of plastic.

09. The lower the plane flies, the less damage it does to the climate. The problem is the contrail that trails behind the plane: it’s a dense layer of small ice crystals. These crystals reflect heat rising from the Earth’s surface, exacerbating the greenhouse effect and exacerbating global warming.

It turns out that the plane practically does not have this contrail if it flies at an altitude of 7.5 kilometers. But if you rise to an altitude of about 19 kilometers, the plane is already becoming a threat to the global climate. If all planes fly low, then the “inversion damage” caused by them for global warming will decrease by 91%.

10. Dogs navigate the earth’s magnetic field like birds. This “compass” is not as important to them as scent or sight, but it is he who helps escaped dogs to return to their owner or home.