Not saying that you’re not. But comes a time in any conversation when the train of ideas comes to an end and awkward silence sets in. While none of these facts may end up as life changing to neither you nor your chatting partner, they are surely better than any other random topic you could revive the conversation with. And if you’re going to do that, why not shift the chat in a more clever direction? Here you go then, 5 facts carefully selected for you from various fields of interest.

1. Every single cell in your body gets replaced

That is pretty much true with the only exception of your brain cells of course – the only type of cell in our bodies that sadly does not regenerate. That would explain why so many people seem to be unusually fond of protecting their own brain cells by not partaking in strenuous, stressful mental activity. But back on topic – every single type of cell in our body has its own life span. For example, red blood cells live for about 4 months, skin cells for 2 to 3 weeks, while some internal organ cells die in a matter of days. Naturally, the body does what is meant to do and replaces the dead cells with brand new, fully functional and ready to go ones.

2. A photon prepares for tens of thousands of years to launch to Earth

„Prepare” is a bit of an overstatement. What we mean here is that a photon literally travels for up to 200,000 years from the core of the Sun up to the surface. The radius of the sun is roughly 700,000 kilometers and the photons would surely take less if their trek to the surface would be straightforward. But considering they go through a long and tedious trip of constantly travelling in a direction before they’re absorbed and released by an atom in a completely different, random direction kind of hinders their smooth and happy departure in outer space. And as a very anticlimactic end to the story, they take 8 minutes to reach the surface of the Earth.

3. Immortality exists, but only in jellyfish

There is a species of jellyfish found in the Mediterranean Sea and waters of Japan that can, in essence, be considered immortal. Known by either Turritopsis Dohrnii (that is, if you want to look even smarter) or simply the immortal jellyfish isn’t literally immortal as you would think it is; instead however, it is the only animal capable of reverting completely to a sexually imature stage after having reached sexual maturity. So when this jellyfish is threatened by stress and physical assault or simply reaches old age, it can return to the polyp form that it once came from and give birth to a new polyp colony. And not only is it immortal, it is amazingly pretty looking too.

4. The direction brain teaser

It goes something along the lines of “If you keep going North, you will end up going South. If you keep going East, you will never end up going West.” It’s one of those things that has you spend several seconds trying to figure out whether the statement is valid or not, then a handful of minutes trying to figure out why. The answer is pretty simple – it’s all perspective. Considering our planet’s axis orientation and, inherently, its rotation around said axis, the Earth’s North and South poles are the mostly static points in its motion.

5. The largest, longest storm in the solar system

More commonly known as the Red Spot on Jupiter. Surely you have seen it in the past but never thought much of it. This red spot is in fact a great anti-cyclonic storm – akin to a hurricane – that has been going on for at least 400 years – that’s how long human kind has been observing it for. What is even considerably more staggering however ist hat considering the planet’s mere size, the Red Spot is large enough to fit 3 entire Earths in its turbulent cillinder of stormy gases and particles. The reason it seems to be so persistent, according to scientists, is that the hurricane never touched land (as Jupiter is a gas giant with a small solid core) and that the storm itself is being kept alive by Jupiter’s internal heat source.