Geography

Interesting Geography topics and articles.Here you can read about seven wonders,astronomy-planets,satellite,continents,rocks and more.

Interesting and Informative Topics

1.What is a Satellite?
2.What is Space?
3.17 Cool Facts about NASA
4.a.what is a sea?,
   b.World's Top 10 Oceans and Seas based on Area ,
  c. What are the "Seven Seas"?
5.What is Global Positioning System(GPS)?
6.what are comets?
7.12 Cool Facts about Space
8.When will the sun explode?
9.Interesting facts about the Sun
10.Planets and Solar System
11.What is Coal?
12.Moon Day - July 20
13.10 Cool Facts about Earth
14.10 cool facts about rocks
15.WHAT IS DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME?

Informative and Educative articles about countries,continents and world.

Continent,Countries and World

1. World Map,The Continents and the Oceans of the World
2. Country Codes
3. 10 Facts About Europe
4. 10 Facts About North America
5. 10 Facts About South America
6. 10 Facts About Asia
7. Facts About Antarctica
8. Facts About Africa
9. Facts About Australia
10. 12 Facts about China
11. List of States and its Capitals in India
12. Countries in Africa
13. Countries in Australia
14. Countries in Europe
15. Countries in Asia
16. Countries in South America
17. Countries in North America
18. The Seven Wonders of the World

Interesting and Informative Articles

1. Lunar Eclipse 2011
2. Birth of a New Giant Planet
3. Going To Mars Could Damage The Brains Of Astronauts
4. About Australia
5. Ecology and Nature Conservation
6. The Cost of Oxygen!! Very Interesting!!!

The Cost of Oxygen!! Very Interesting!!!

Interesting facts about oxygen we use  and trees.

What is a Satellite?

Anything that revolves around Earth or another body in space in a circular or elliptical path is called as "Satellite".It can be a planet or a machine.

Example: Earth and the moon are  natural satellites. 

                  Sputnik 1, Explorer 1 are man-made satellites

Satellites are in many shapes and sizes.Commonly most satellites contains two parts namely,  an antenna and a power source. 

- The antenna sends and receives information, often to and from Earth. 
- The power source can be a solar panel or battery. Solar panels make power by turning sunlight into electricity. 

NASA satellites carry cameras and scientific sensors.
These artificial satellites are used to  

* take pictures of our home planet and  provides information about clouds, oceans,air, land,ice that help meteorologists predict weather and track hurricanes.
*  take pictures of other planets, the sun, black holes, dark matter or faraway galaxies that help scientists better understand the solar system and universe.  
*monitor wildfires, volcanoes and their smoke.
* monitor space to collect data from the solar system and universe. ,explore asteroids, comets and more.

Satellites are also used mainly for communications, such as beaming TV signals and phone calls around the world. TV signals and phone calls are sent upward to a satellite. Then, almost instantly, the satellite can send them back down to different locations on Earth. 

A group of more than 20 satellites make up the Global Positioning System(GPS). If you have a GPS receiver, these satellites helps to figure out your exact location. 

Natural Satellites works continuously without a break.

Do you know Why?

Day and Night,Time,Climate everything will get affected if this natural satellites slows down or stops its work.

Credits:NASA

Earth,a  natural satellite orbits the sun  because of the pull of the Sun's gravity.The gravity of the Sun keeps earth in their orbit. Earth takes one year to revolve around the sun.Earth takes 24 hrs(a day) to rotate on its axis from west to east. The Earth revolves around the Sun at a speed of about 18.5 miles/sec (30 km/sec). 

Moon ,a  natural satellite orbits Earth because of the pull of Earth's gravity.The Moon takes about 27 days to orbit the Earth.The moon orbits Earth at an average speed of 2,288 miles per hour (3,683 kilometers per hour).It travels at different speeds during different parts of its orbit. It moves slowest when it is at furthest distance from Earth.It moves fastest in its orbit when it is closest to Earth.

What is Space?

 Space is a vacuum place without air.Even if you shout,no one can hear you in space.Because sound waves cannot travel through a vacuum. It is a strange hostile place with no air, noise or smell.Space is filled with incredibly high-energy phenomena. It is proved to be a paradox of nature. 

Where is Space?

 Beyond the Earth's atmosphere is the 'Outer space' .With no air to scatter sunlight and produce a blue sky, space appears dark with stars.

What’s in space?

Space is not completely empty.It is not a perfect vacuum. There are particles and electromagnetic waves travelling through Space. It is also filled with huge amounts of thinly spread gas and dust. Even the emptiest parts of space contain at least a few hundred atoms or molecules per cubic meter.

Credits-NASA

Space is also filled with many forms of radiation that are dangerous to astronauts. 

What is Space Day?

Space Day is celebrated on the first Thursday of each May. Its aim is to promote maths, science, technology and engineering education by harnessing children’s enthusiasm for space and inspiring them to continue the work of today’s space explorers.

Country Codes

What is a Country Code?

The International
 Dialing codes of a country is called "Country Code".Every country has a unique country code. Country codes are short alphabetic or numeric geographical codes (geocodes) developed to represent countries and dependent areas.

In simple,Country codes are used to make International Phone calls.Country codes are the prefixes you need to dial before calling to the country.Otherwise known as International Area Code(IAC).

Country Codes List

Country	Country Code
Abkhazia	+995 44 +7 840, 940
Afghanistan	+93
Albania	+355
Algeria	+213
American Samoa	+1 684
Andorra	+376
Angola	+244
Anguilla	+1 264
Antigua and Barbuda	+1 268
Argentina	+54
Armenia	+374
Aruba	+297
Ascension Island	+247
Australia	+61
Australian Antarctic Territory	+672 1x
Austria	+43
Azerbaijan	+994
Bahamas	+1 242
Bahrain	+973
Bangladesh	+880
Barbados	+1 246
Belarus	+375
Belgium	+32
Belize	+501
Benin	+229
Bermuda	+1 441
Bhutan	+975
Bolivia	+591
Bonaire	+599 7
Bosnia and Herzegovina	+387
Botswana	+267
Brazil	+55
British Indian Ocean Territory	+246
British Virgin Islands	+1 284
Brunei	+673
Bulgaria	+359
Burkina Faso	+226
Burundi	+257
Cambodia	+855
Cameroon	+237
Canada	+1
Cape Verde	+238
Cayman Islands	+1 345
Central African Republic	+236
Chad	+235
Chile	+56
Christmas Island	+61 8 9164
Cocos Islands	+61 8 9162
Colombia	+57
Cook Islands	+682
Costa Rica	+506
Côte d'Ivoire	+225
Croatia	+385
Cuba	+53
Curacao	+599 9
Cyprus	+357
Czech Republic	+420
Democratic Republic of the Congo	+243
Denmark	+45
Djibouti	+253
Dominica	+1 767
Dominican Republic	+1 809 / 829 / 849
East Timor	+670
Ecuador	+593
Egypt	+20
El Salvador	+503
Equatorial Guinea	+240
Eritrea	+291
Estonia	+372
Ethiopia	+251
Falkland Islands	+500
Faroe Islands	+298
Federated States of Micronesia	+691
Fiji	+679
Finland	+358
France	+33
French Guiana	+594
French Polynesia	+689
Gabon	+241
Gambia	+220
Georgia	+995
Germany	+49
Ghana	+233
Gibraltar	+350
Global Mobile Satellite System	+881
Greece	+30
Greenland	+299
Grenada	+1 473
Guadeloupe	+590
Guam	+1 671
Guatemala	+502
Guernsey	+44 1481
Guinea	+224
Guinea-Bissau	+245
Guyana	+592
Haiti	+509
Honduras	+504
Hong Kong	+852
Hungary	+36
Iceland	+354
India	+91
Indonesia	+62
International Freephone UIFN	+800
International Premium Rate Service	+979
Iran	+98
Iraq	+964
Ireland	+353
Isle of Man	+44 1624
Israel	+972
Italy	+39
Jamaica	+1 876
Japan	+81
Jersey	+44 1534
Jordan	+962
Kazakhstan	+7 6xx, 7xx
Kenya	+254
Kiribati	+686
Kosovo	+377 44 / 45 +386 43 / 49 +381 28 / 29 / 38 / 39
Kuwait	+965
Kyrgyzstan	+996
Laos	+856
Latvia	+371
Lebanon	+961
Lesotho	+266
Liberia	+231
Libya	+218
Liechtenstein	+423
Lithuania	+370
Luxembourg	+352
Macau	+853
Macedonia	+389
Madagascar	+261
Mainland China	+86
Malawi	+265
Malaysia	+60
Maldives	+960
Mali	+223
Malta	+356
Marshall Islands	+692
Martinique	+596
Mauritania	+222
Mauritius	+230
Mayotte	+262 269 / 639
Mexico	+52
Moldova	+373
Monaco	+377
Mongolia	+976
Montenegro	+382
Montserrat	+1 664
Morocco	+212
Mozambique	+258
Myanmar	+95
Nagorno-Karabakh	+374 47 / 97
Namibia	+264
Nauru	+674
Nepal	+977
Netherlands	+31
New Caledonia	+687
New Zealand	+64
Nicaragua	+505
Niger	+227
Nigeria	+234
Niue	+683
Norfolk Island	+672 3
North Korea	+850
Northern Mariana Islands	+1 670
Norway	+47
Oman	+968
Pakistan	+92
Palau	+680
Palestinian territories	+970
Panama	+507
Papua New Guinea	+675
Paraguay	+595
Peru	+51
Philippines	+63
Poland	+48
Portugal	+351
Puerto Rico	+1 787 / 939
Qatar	+974
Republic of China (Taiwan)	+886
Republic of the Congo	+242
Réunion	+262
Romania	+40
Russia	+7
Rwanda	+250
Saba	+599 4
Saint Helena	+290
Saint Kitts and Nevis	+1 869
Saint Lucia	+1 758
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	+1 784
Saint-Pierre and Miquelon	+508
Samoa	+685
San Marino	+378
São Tomé and Príncipe	+239
Saudi Arabia	+966
Senegal	+221
Serbia	+381
Seychelles	+248
Sierra Leone	+232
Singapore	+65
Sint Eustatius	+599 3
Sint Maarten	+599 5
Slovakia	+421
Slovenia	+386
Solomon Islands	+677
Somalia	+252
South Africa	+27
South Korea	+82
South Sudan	+211
Spain	+34
Sri Lanka	+94
Sudan	+249
Suriname	+597
Swaziland	+268
Sweden	+46
Switzerland	+41
Syria	+963
Tajikistan	+992
Tanzania	+255
Telecommunications for Disaster Relief by OCHA	+888
Thailand	+66
Togo	+228
Tokelau	+690
Tonga	+676
Trinidad and Tobago	+1 868
Tristan da Cunha	+290 8
Tunisia	+216
Turkey	+90
Turkmenistan	+993
Turks and Caicos Islands	+1 649
Tuvalu	+688
U.S. Virgin Islands	+1 340
Uganda	+256
Ukraine	+380
United Arab Emirates	+971
United Kingdom	+44
United States of America	+1
Uruguay	+598
Uzbekistan	+998
Vanuatu	+678
Vatican City	+39 06 698
Venezuela	+58
Vietnam	+84
Wallis and Futuna	+681
Western Sahara	+212 5288 / 5289
Yemen	+967
Zambia	+260
Zanzibar	+255 24
Zimbabwe	+263

17 Cool Facts about NASA

1.NASA stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Aeronautics is the science of flying.

2.NASA was founded in 1958 as a part of the United States government when President Dwight D. Elsenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act.

3.The first human in space was Yuri Gagarin on April 12, 1961.He is a cosmonaut from the Soviet Union(Russia).

4.NASA quarantined the astronauts who landed on the moon and when returned to Earth.NASA was concerned that astronauts may have picked up germs on the moon that don't exist on Earth.No one ever got sick,and after Apollo 14,the quarantines stopped.

5.Random Apollo command module names - Casper,Gumdrop and Charlie Brown.

6.Mercury-Atlas 6 was the NASA's first manned spaceflight.

7.The Apollo program was designed to send people to the moon.

8.Astronauts will grow in space.They become one or two inch taller when they are in space,This is because without gravity your spine straightens out ,causing you to stretch out.

9.On June 3,1965,Edward White was the first American to go on a space walk.

10.Sputnik 1 was the first artificial satellite in space.It was built and launched by the Soviet Union and marked the beginning of the space race.

11.The first  US American space shuttle is "Columbia", was launched in the year 1981.

12.The Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs helped NASA learn about flying in space. This led to the first human landing on the moon in 1969.

13.NASA Headquarters is in Washington, D.C. There are ten NASA centers all over the United States. There are also seven test and research facilities. More than 18,000 people work for NASA!

14.NASA makes satellites which helps scientists to learn more about Earth.It works to make life on Earth better.

15.NASA sends humans to the moon and other planets.It also sends probes out into space. 

16.The space shuttles can be flown back to the Earth and sent into space again,while a new command module have to be built for each Appolo's mission.

17.NASA is responsible for aviation and spaceflight.It works to make air travel better for everyone on Earth.

Birth of a New Giant Planet

Astronomers have captured the first direct images of a Giant Planet.To the untrained eye, the picture may appear to look like a blob surrounded by gas and dust, but astronomers say the image actually shows the birth of a gas giant planet, much like Jupiter in our solar system.

“So far, planet formation has mostly been a topic tackled by computer simulations,” project leader Sascha Quanz, an astronomer at ZTH Zurich in Switzerland, said in a statement. “If our discovery is indeed a forming planet, then for the first time scientists will be able to study the planet formation process and the interaction of a forming planet and its natal environment empirically at a very early stage.”

This is not the first time astronomers have paid attention to the star HD 100546, which is roughly 335 light-years from Earth. Previously another giant planet was found floating six times farther from the star than Earth orbits the sun. The planet that was photographed as it was born orbits the star ten times farther away than its sibling planet and a whopping 70 times the distance between the sun and Earth.

One of the main reasons astronomers are so certain the image depicts the birth of a planet is how it affirms the existing theory of how planets are formed. Each planetary system begins with a star that is created from large clumps of dust and gas. Once the star is formed, leftover gas and dust continues to circle the star until it comes together and forms a planet. Scientists believe this what is taking place in the image.

The picture also shows structures orbiting the star that scientists believe were formed as the baby planet and the other floating materials interacted. In addition, data collected by the research team has revealed that the materials surrounding the new planet have been heated. All of these observations fit perfect with the previously accepted theory of how planets are formed.

This is the first picture of its kind because Earth’s atmosphere causes any images taken of space to blur. However, the NACO optics system on the Very Large Telescope fixed this blurriness. In addition, the instrument was also able to block out distracting bright lights from the nearby star because it observes near-infrared wavelengths. This allowed the astronomers to be able see the forming planet.

Birth of a New Giant Planet

“Exoplanet research is one of the most exciting new frontiers in astronomy, and direct imaging of planets is still a new field, greatly benefiting from recent improvements in instruments and data analysis methods,” said Adam Amara who was part of the study. “In this research we used data analysis techniques developed for cosmological research, showing that cross-fertilization of ideas between fields can lead to extraordinary progress.”

Source:ScienceRecorder

List of States and its Capitals in India

India is a country comprising of twenty-eight states and seven union territories.

India

STATE	CAPITAL
1.Andra Pradesh	Hyderabad
2.Arunachal Pradesh	Itangar
3.Assam	Dispur
4.Bihar	Patna
5.Chhattisgarh	Raipur
6.Goa	Panaji
7.Gujarat	Gandhinagar
8.Haryana	Chandigarh
9.Himachal Pradesh	Shimla
10.Jammu and Kashmir	Srinagar and Jammu
11.Jharkhand	Ranchi
12.Karnataka	Bangalore
13.Kerala	Thiruvananthapuram
14.Madya Pradesh	Bhopal
15.Maharashtra	Mumbai
16.Manipur	Imphal
17.Meghalaya	Shillong
18.Mizoram	Aizawi
19.Nagaland	Kohima
20.Orissa	Bhubaneshwar
21.Punjab	Chandigarh
22.Rajasthan	Jaipur
23.Sikkim	Gangtok
24.Tamil Nadu	Chennai
25.Tripura	Agartala
26.Uttaranchal	Dehradun
27.Uttar Pradesh	Lucknow
28.West Bengal	Kolkata

          Union Territories                             Capital

1.Andaman and Nicobar Islands		Port Blair
2.Chandigarh		Chandigarh
3.Dadar and Nagar Haveli		Silvassa
4.Daman and Diu		Daman
5.Delhi		Delhi
6.Lakshadeep		Kavaratti
7.Pondicherry		Pondicherry

12 Facts about China

1.China is the most populous country in the world,with a continuous culture stretching back nearly 4,000 years.

2.The Great Wall of China is considered as one of the ancient wonders of the world.It is also listed in UNESCO World Heritage Site.

3.The National Day of China  is celebrated every year on October 1. It is a public holiday in the People's Republic of China to celebrate their national day.

4.The Chinese New Year begins anytime between late January and mid-February based on their ancient Chinese calendar.The next Chinese New Year (2014) is on Friday, January 31 and animal sign is Horse.

5.The Chinese calendar is the ancient calendar with a complete cycle of 60 years.In chinese calender,12 months are represented by 12 animals namely Rat, Ox ,Tiger, Hare, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep ,Monkey Rooster, Dog ,Pig .Each year is also represented by an animal. The Chinese believe that a person will have some of the characteristics of the animal representing the year in which he is born.

6.The Chinese people believe that numbers will bring auspicious or inauspicious based on their pronunciation sound.In Chinese culture "eight" is considered the luckiest number as it sounds similar to the word "prosper" or "wealth". Number 4 is considered an unlucky number because it  nearly sounds similar to the word "death". In China, due to that Nokia cell phones have no series beginning with a 4.

7. In Chinese,  there is no alphabets,instead they have symbols(Chinese characters) based on the meaning.It is a difficult language to learn with over 60000 characters.Only 5000-10000 characters are mostly learnt by school and college students commonly.

Great Wall of China

8.Quick facts about china

Full name: People's Republic of China

Capital: Beijing

Largest city: Shanghai,Chongqing,Beijing, and Tianjin

Major language: Putonghua/Mandarin Chinese
Major religions: Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Taoism

Currency(¥)=Renminbi ; code: CNY
*"Yuan"(coins) is the name of a unit of the Renminbi currency.

Main exports: Manufactured goods, including textiles, garments, electronics, toys

Internet domain: .cn
International dialling code: +86

9.Most Popular Chinese food -  Dim sum,Noodles,Rice,Shark’s Fin and Bird’s Nest Soups,Bean Curd

10.Chinese dragons are legendary creatures in Chinese mythology and folklore.The chinese people gives most importance to dragons which traditionally symbolize potent and auspicious powers, particularly control over water, rainfall, hurricane, and floods. The dragon is also a symbol of power, strength, and good luck.

11.Feng shui is 3000 years old ancient Chinese astrology.It brings prosperity, good health and helps to improve our life by examining the energy flowing in our surrounding environment(particular room, house, building, or garden).(more@Factsquest)

12.Top 10 tourist Places in China

• Beijing
• Xian
• Shanghai
• Guilin
• Yangtze River
• Lhasa Tibet
• Jiuzhaigou Sichuan
• Lijiang Yunnan
• Zhangjiajie Hunan
• Silk Road in China