› added 6 years ago

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TIL gold nanoparticles are showing promise for cancer treatment. Clusters of gold nanoparticles sit on the surface of a cancer cell. When hit with a burst of infrared light, the clusters vaporize nearby water, creating bubbles of vapor that burst and tear apart the cell.

Read more ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

via reddit.com

ZmmB TIL that the ampersand (&) was once the last letter of the alphabet. In latin the & was called “per se”. When reciting the alphabet people would say, “X, Y, Z and per se”. That last bit (“and per se”) eventually ran together to create the word, “ampersand”
b9Ek0 TIL Mars only gets close enough to Earth to give up much detail just once every 780 days. It’s the only planet to reveal an appreciable amount of surface detail in a small telescope, and it also features occasional surprises such as dust storms and local fogs and cloud banks
9wkKm TIL that the oldest surviving globe in the world is named Erdapfel (in English, potato) doesnt feature the american continents since they weren't discoverd yet, and potato's originally came from the continents
KYdNR TIL the creator of HBO's White Lotus was a contestant on both Survivor and The Amazing Race.
nWobG TIL the 2002 Pontiac Firebird and the 2002 Chevy Camaro were the last popular production cars that had T-tops.