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Wolfram|Alpha has many trillions of pieces of data, many of which are facts about people, places, and things. All of this knowledge is built upon a computational engine that allows us to mash up topic areas and do impressive, if not outrageous, computations. In honor of it being Friday, we’ll share a few fun facts to get your mind curious about what else is waiting to be discovered within Wolfram|Alpha.
Fact: Your Halloween Jack-o’-lantern has 40 chromosomes.
Fact: There are 4.3 x 10^6 calories in one short ton of Snickers.
Fact: Lassoing the Moon from Earth will require about 239,200 miles of rope on average!
Fact: 36 degrees was the high temperature in New York City on the day Justin Bieber was born.
Fact: On April 1, 1976, just 47 years after Louis Marx popularized the yo-yo, Apple Computer was created—no joke!
These are just few of the fun facts highlighting data areas such as nutrition, species, science, weather, history, and events. What fun facts have you discovered in Wolfram|Alpha?
239,200 miles might be enough for a tether, but a lasso must also encircle the moon.
They take that into account: It’s the distance to the moon plus it’s circumference.
>Fact: Lassoing the Moon from Earth will require about 239,200 miles of rope on average!
I just tried this and got 250,855 miles (later 244,059 miles). I think there should be a notation on data that changes relatively rapidly (“value changing at ~1839 miles per day”), or use two pieces of data: the average value and the real-time value.