# Buzz Explained

> The world, explained in simple words.


## Posts

- [A light-year is a distance, not a time](https://buzzexplained.com/light-year-distance-not-time/): A light-year is how far light travels in one year, about 6 trillion miles. It also means every look into space is a look back in time.
- [Why the Moon seems to change shape every night](https://buzzexplained.com/why-the-moon-changes-shape/): The Moon never changes shape. What changes is how much of its sunlit half we see from Earth as it moves around us.
- [The solar storms behind the northern and southern lights](https://buzzexplained.com/what-causes-auroras/): Auroras start with the Sun. Particles from solar storms follow Earth's magnetic field to the poles, where gases in the air glow green, red, blue and purple.
- [Sunlight is white, so why does the sky look blue?](https://buzzexplained.com/why-the-sky-is-blue/): Sunlight holds every color, but air scatters blue light the most. That is why the sky looks blue, and why sunsets turn red.
- [How the G20 works, with a new chair every year](https://buzzexplained.com/how-the-g20-works/): The G20 brings major economies together, yet it has no permanent secretariat. Here is who is in it and how it is run.
- [Who is, and is not, a member of the United Nations](https://buzzexplained.com/who-is-a-member-of-the-united-nations/): The UN lists 193 member states, each with a join date. The UN also lists two non-member observer states.
- [Behind .fr and .au: how ISO country codes work](https://buzzexplained.com/iso-country-codes-explained/): Website endings like .fr and .au come from ISO 3166, a shared set of country codes. Here is what the codes are, where they are used and who keeps them.
- [Ten tests for World Heritage, and why one is enough](https://buzzexplained.com/world-heritage-ten-tests/): A place joins the World Heritage List if it has outstanding universal value and meets at least one of ten tests. Here is what they ask for.
- [When a central bank raises or cuts interest rates](https://buzzexplained.com/central-bank-interest-rates/): Central banks move interest rates to keep prices steady. They buy or sell securities, and that pushes short-term rates up or down.
- [How interest earns interest](https://buzzexplained.com/how-interest-earns-interest/): Compound interest means you earn interest on your savings and also on the interest you have already earned.
- [What the GDP number counts, and what it leaves out](https://buzzexplained.com/gdp-what-it-counts/): GDP is the value of final goods and services a country produces in a quarter or a year. It leaves out unpaid work and says little about well-being.
- [The shopping basket behind every inflation number](https://buzzexplained.com/inflation-shopping-basket/): Inflation is how fast prices rise over a period, most often a year. Government agencies measure it by tracking the cost of a basket of everyday items.
- [How GPS knows where you are, starting with a clock](https://buzzexplained.com/how-gps-knows-where-you-are/): GPS finds your place on Earth by listening to satellites that send their position and the time.
- [Do undersea cables really carry 99% of internet traffic?](https://buzzexplained.com/undersea-cables-99-percent-internet-traffic/): TeleGeography says the 99% claim is true, but it cannot give an exact number because the data is missing.
- [Passkey or password: what FIDO says about each](https://buzzexplained.com/passkey-or-password-fido/): A passkey is a secret kept on your device, and you unlock it the same way you unlock the device.
- [Where your files go when you save them to the cloud](https://buzzexplained.com/where-files-go-cloud/): The cloud is a shared pool of computers, storage and software that you reach over a network.
- [How a census works, and why it matters](https://buzzexplained.com/how-a-census-works/): What gets counted, who uses the numbers, and what happens when millions of people are missed.
- [Metric or imperial: the truth about the “only three countries” claim](https://buzzexplained.com/metric-system-only-three-countries/): What NIST says about the claim, and how much metric the United States already uses.
- [Why India has only one time zone](https://buzzexplained.com/india-one-time-zone/): India’s single clock, a tea-garden time that runs an hour ahead, and the countries that set their clocks by half an hour.
- [Why we have leap years, in simple words](https://buzzexplained.com/why-we-have-leap-years/): The four-year rule, the century exception, and the small error that still builds up over hundreds of years.

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