Here Are 18 Facts We Didn't Know At The Start Of February
Featuring seven new Earth-like planets, bees that can use tools, and a 400-million-year-old metre-long worm you probably wouldn’t want to come across on the seafloor.
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1. There's a star with seven Earth-like planets orbiting it, 40 light years away.
2. By the year 2030, a baby girl born in South Korea will be able to expect to live to age 90.
3. It looks like the part of Earth's crust under New Zealand and the surrounding area might actually be a submerged continent. The group of scientists arguing for it to be classed as such are calling it Zealandia.
4. Arctic sea ice reached a record low in the first week of February this year.
5. Eating 10 portions of fruit and veg a day lowers your risk of dying from certain conditions like heart disease or a stroke even more than eating five a day.
6. There's now an app you can use as a contraceptive – but experts have warned that more evidence is needed to show it works.
7. Vitamin D might actually cut your risk of catching a cold or the flu.
8. For some children, antibiotics might be a more appropriate treatment for appendicitis than surgery.
9. It turns out that the Zika virus can infect cells that line blood vessel walls, which is how it crosses the placenta from a mother to her fetus.