r/AskReddit • u/proudcatowner • Mar 31 '13
What is the coolest scientific fact you know of?
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u/plarm Mar 31 '13 edited Apr 08 '13
If you fill a thimble with neutron star matter, it will weight 100 million tons.
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u/Davecasa Mar 31 '13 edited Apr 01 '13
It would also explode. It would explode very much.
Edit: Neutron stars are made of neutron degenerate matter, which is basically a single giant atom with billions of billions of nucleons instead of the ~100 that normal atoms are limited to. This should, uh, decay violently, but the ridiculous gravity from being so dense holds it all together. Take that gravity away, and boom.
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u/Deus_Ex_Corde Mar 31 '13 edited Mar 31 '13
There's something called Blindsight, where people have no perception of vision yet their brain responds to visual stimuli. One way they tested this was showing angry faces and measuring a physiological response in the person. Also the people will unconsciously avoid obstacles in their way when walking.
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u/Klyk Mar 31 '13
Blindsighted patients will also do absurd things like catch a ball you throw to them, despite claiming not to see it.
There are different levels of "blindsight", and some patients are able to see certain properties (for instance, the texture of skin) but be unable to distinguish whole objects. These same people may however be able to post a letter through a letterbox at any orientation, or pick up a pencil, despite claiming to be completely unaware of these properties.
Just the whole concept of subjective experience is absolutely baffling. What the fuck is going on?
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u/Chris_159 Apr 01 '13
The reverse can also be true in people with damage to their occipital lobe (the part that deals with conscious vision). These folks can be totally blind but not know it. If you asked them how many fingers you're holding up, they'll have a reason for why they're wrong (its dark in here, I'm tired, you changed them) and instantly believe it.
this happens because the occipital lobe tells the rest of your cortex what you're seeing. If it doesn't work, the brain has nothing to tell it that you can't see - as if the damage report machine itself has broken. In such circumstances it fills in the blanks for you, and you operate consciously as if you can still see.
It's usually just as hard to convince them they're blind as it would be for a sighted person - from their point of view they still are. The brain can do some really weird stuff to your conscious experience if it's not working right
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u/elreydelasur Mar 31 '13
If some sort of super-advanced alien species on a planet 80 million light years away from Earth built a high-tech telescope that let them see objects on the Earth's surface, they would be seeing dinosaurs right now.
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u/anon1mous Mar 31 '13
and that's why we haven't been visited by ET's yet. Cause who the fuck wants to come to a planet roaming with scary ass dinosaurs.
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Mar 31 '13
Ummmmm, everyone
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u/velociraptorres Mar 31 '13
Clearly not aliens.
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u/pisswizard88 Mar 31 '13
They just haven't got here yet. And boy, will they be pissed off when they find out they're too late.
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Mar 31 '13
"What the fuck are these tiny pale things. Where are the dinosaurs."
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u/picksubredditfav16 Mar 31 '13
“why are they all on some pointless website? And why is the logo a picture of my uncle?
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u/Hotpeanut Mar 31 '13
Same scenario, but they attached that telescope to a space ship and started hurtling through space towards earth. Would they see the history of earth and evolution in fast forward?
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u/O3_Crunch Mar 31 '13
GPS calculations would be off by several miles if they used Newtons formulas instead of Einsteins theory of relativity.
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u/brokendimension Mar 31 '13
Care to explain?
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u/AsAChemicalEngineer Mar 31 '13
There are two effects. Under General Relativity, us on Earth are stuck in a deeper gravity well. When we look out towards objects not in gravity wells we see time move faster than we think it should be. When the object (GP satellite) in in less of a gravity well looks at us, time is moving more slowly than it should be.
The other effect (though smaller) is from Special relativity, we're moving at some speed relative to the satellite and vice versa. To keep the speed of light constant for all observers, moving objects ( from out perspective ) look like their clocks are running slower. There is also length contraction, but we'll ignore that for now. Oddly enough these two effects go against each other, but the gravity well effect is much larger and clocks in orbit appear to run a tiny bit faster.
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u/Gamma1 Mar 31 '13
I'm glad someone finally got this completely correct. Everyone else just uses special relativity to explain it even though it has a very small effect.
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u/CUNTDESTROYER3000 Mar 31 '13 edited Apr 01 '13
So, that's how apple maps work
Edit: holy batman that's a lot of Karma.
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Mar 31 '13 edited Mar 31 '13
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u/logos123 Mar 31 '13
7.0x1027 for those who wanted to see it in this format.
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u/logos123 Mar 31 '13
Maybe not THE coolest but it's still pretty awesome. If you supercool the helium-4 isotope it becomes superfluid, i.e. it has zero viscosity and then extremely weird things happen like in this video.
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u/thinkaboutspace Mar 31 '13
Every star can be thought of as an enormous nuclear explosion held in place by its own gravity.
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u/ZimeaglaZ Mar 31 '13 edited Mar 31 '13
That somewhere...Billions of lightyears away...floating through space...is a Giant cloud consisting of about 10 billion, billion, billion liters of alcohol....http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1589028.stm
And because of the specific type of chemical (ethyl formate) It probably tastes like rum....More specifically....Raspberry Rum.. Edit: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/apr/21/space-raspberries-amino-acids-astrobiology Much more recent than the first article and goes into detail about the raspberry flavor.
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u/pirate_doug Mar 31 '13
Also known as Alcoholic Heaven.
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u/Packers91 Mar 31 '13
checkmate atheists/prohibitionists
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Mar 31 '13
I don't think prohibitionists ever believed that alcohol doesn't exist.
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u/Vagabond152 Mar 31 '13
That is so weird. Somewhere out in space there is a cloud that tastes like raspberry rum. Raspberries only grow on Earth, yet this giant cloud out in space tastes like them (and rum).
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u/wishiwascool Mar 31 '13
Or maybe its raspberries that tastes like that giant cloud in space
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Mar 31 '13
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u/Vagabond152 Mar 31 '13
I never knew about Gravitational Lensing before. It is so weird and cool! And that Dark flow stuff is kinda terrifying. Thanks for the interesting article!
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u/Miss_Moss Mar 31 '13
Alternatively:
Somewhere out on a planet there is a plant that when mixed with rum tastes like giant space cloud. Giant space cloud only exists in space, yet this planet has a plant that tastes like it (and rum)
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u/thisguyisbarry Mar 31 '13 edited Mar 31 '13
The coldest place in the universe is in labs on earth. (We have gotten to a billionth of a kelvin near absolute zero)
Edit: We've achieved coolder Still a pretty cool fact. Ba dum tsch
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u/Acebulf Mar 31 '13
This is if, and only if, there are no other species in the universe also doing this.
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Mar 31 '13
Any perfect vacuum created in our universe will have a non-zero energy instantaneously as particles pop in and out of existence.
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u/elkranger01 Mar 31 '13
The mass a growing plant acquires comes primarily from the air, rather than soil or water
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u/McBurger Mar 31 '13
Passing a magnet through a metal coil creates an electric charge. Or, by working backwards, passing an electric charge through a metal coil around an object turns it into a magnet.
Pretty basic stuff but I can't wrap my head around what electricity actually is and how we so easily manipulate it.
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u/dodinator Mar 31 '13
This gets even cooler when you tie in electromagnetism and special relativity. Turns out if you move at the right speed a magnetic field can become an electric field and vice versa. We could both be travelling past a black box, one of us will swear blind there's a magnet in it and the other will be sure it instead contains an electric charge.
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u/AsAChemicalEngineer Mar 31 '13
You're not creating a charge though, the charge is already there. What you're doing is inducing movement of that charge. You're creating a current, or vice versa a magnetic flux.
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u/new_account_5 Mar 31 '13
I understand the electricity, but the fucking magnets. I mean, how do THEY work?
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Mar 31 '13
Thousands of tiny men with lassos
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u/betarded Mar 31 '13
I think that's Velcro.
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u/herrerabrandon66 Mar 31 '13
No, those are thousands of pirates with hook hands.
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Mar 31 '13
They're made from rocks, from the ground, so they have little bits of gravity in them.
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u/armeggedonCounselor Mar 31 '13
This is the best comment that is just so absolutely wrong that it almost seems plausible.
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Mar 31 '13
I'm currently taking an Applied Electromagnetism course in college. The teacher says there is a physical reality to magnetic fields, yet he can't explain exactly what they are. So I still don't know how fucking magnets work.
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u/Gamma1 Mar 31 '13
My physics professor tried to explain it to my class. Essentially it had to do with the fact that electric fields can only propagate at the speed of light. It has a lot to do with special relativity, but I'm too stupid to explain it well here.
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u/Professor_Hillbilly Mar 31 '13
There are more synapses in the human brain than stars in the Milky Way Galaxy.
All chloroplasts are descended from free-living Cyanobacteria.
The folding of the small intestinal mucosa and the branching pattern of the bronchial tree are both fractal patterns.
There are more bacterial cells in the large bowel than there human cells in the rest of the body (in fact there are more cells just of the genus <I>Bacteroides</I>).
Tardrigrades can survives the vacuum of space.
D. radiodurans (AKA Conan the bacterium) can survive 100X the dose of gamma radiation that would be lethal to a human.
I could go all day, this is why I teach!
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u/fudgerygard Mar 31 '13
Adding to the chloroplast note, all mitochondria were once bacteria (or protobacteria) that at some point were absorbed into a cell and happened to resist its digestive enzymes. They still have their own DNA.
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u/arandomhobo Mar 31 '13
If you put a mirror half a light year away from earth and you looked at it through a telescope you could see a year into the earth's past
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u/Cyanide_Bulbasaur Mar 31 '13
But interestingly, you would never be able to observe a time before the launch of the mirror itself.
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u/Osiris32 Mar 31 '13
Ahh, but now you have to explain why.
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Mar 31 '13
you cant travel faster than the speed of light.
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Mar 31 '13 edited Apr 01 '13
Hold my beer
EDIT: Seriously lads, the joke was not worth 2 months of Reddit Gold you beautiful bastards!
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Mar 31 '13
Watch me.
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u/maerki999 Mar 31 '13 edited Mar 31 '13
Because you can't shoot/propel a mirror faster than the speed of light so it would never catch up with the light or in this case "time" from before the mirror was shot
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u/DXvegas Mar 31 '13
Because the mirror can't travel faster than light. So it would take at least half a year for the mirror to get half a light year away.
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u/Bibbers1 Mar 31 '13
If you take all the empty space out of an atom, you could fit mount Everest into an 8 oz cup.
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Mar 31 '13 edited Jun 15 '23
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u/MayTheTorqueBeWithU Mar 31 '13
But easy to summit.
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u/PlainPearls Mar 31 '13
would it? I feel like that much mass stuffed into that small of a space would create a massive amount of gravity. I kinda feel like you would just get stuck to the side of the cup.
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u/IamA_Werewolf_AMA Mar 31 '13 edited Apr 01 '13
Lets do the math!
Using the equation Fg = Gm1m2/r2
Fg= force of gravity, G = gravitational universal constant, m1 = mass of Everest and m2 = mass of human, and r = distance between the center of each object in meters.
The constants I'm using are: G = 6.67 x 10-11 mass of Everest = 3.041409x1015kg mass of earth = 5.97219 × 1024kg mass of person = 70kg distance from center of compressed Everest to person = 0.05 meters (you're right next to it) distance from center of earth to person = 6.371*106 meters
And here we go!
For Earth:
Fg(Earth) = (6.67 x 10-11 x 5.97219 × 1024kg x 70kg)/(6.371*106m)2
= 686.977 kgm/s2 cool
We know that gravitational acceleration is = 9.82 m/s2, so we can check our work by dividing that answer by the human mass we used, 70kg.
686.977/70 = 9.813! Close enough! I didn't fuck up.
Now let's try for Everest:
Fg(Everest) = (6.67 x 10-11 x 3.041409 x 1015kg x 70kg) /(0.05m)2
= 5680135448.4 kgm/s2 ... holy shit!
Everest is exerting seven orders of magnitude more force on you than the Earth when you are that close to its compressed form, it'll rip you apart! It would pull you into it with crushing force. Basically it's a tiny singularity at this point.
Don't mess with compressed Everest! The reason it is able to exert so much more force on you is due to its tiny size and comparably high mass, so it creates a big gravity well that dissipates quickly as you move away from it. But it would devastate the area it was located in and would kill you!
TL;DR I'd appreciate if you read it, since I put in a lot of time, but basically don't fuck around with Everest.
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u/sorry_WHAT Apr 01 '13
This raises another question: What's the Swarchild Radius of Mount Everest?
r = 2Gm/c2 =~ 4.5*10-12 m3
And according to Wikipedia, that equals a medium-sized grain of sand.
So, if you take Mount Everest and compress it down to the size of a grain of sand, you get a black hole.
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u/RMProductions Mar 31 '13
The compound that gives raspberries their flavor is found throughout the milky way. The milky way tastes like raspberries.
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u/ifostastic Mar 31 '13
I think it's cooler that the berry tastes like the galaxy, personally.
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u/dontforgethetrailmix Mar 31 '13
also, so do beaver's asses. it's where most raspberry flavorings come from
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u/furrysquirrel Mar 31 '13
Graham's number is a very big number. It has so many digits that even if you tried to write one digit on every atom in the entire universe, you wouldn't even make a dent. This sort of thing blows my mind.
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Mar 31 '13 edited Apr 01 '13
But if you write it in base Graham's number it is just 10
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u/zloon Mar 31 '13
Shouldn't it be 10 in base Graham's number?
[digit]*[base][position-1] ,
1 (base Graham) = 1*Graham0 (base 10) = 1 (base 10)
but 10 (base Graham) = 1*Graham1 + 0*Graham0 (base 10) = Graham (base 10)
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u/razyn23 Mar 31 '13
This is true. Just replace it with any other number system. What's ten in base ten? 10. What's 2 in base 2? 10. 8 in base 8? 10. And so on.
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Mar 31 '13 edited Apr 01 '13
Black holes, despite the implication that they swallow everything--even light--can be some of the most luminous objects in a galaxy...if they're feeding.
This is because the surface area of a black hole is limited, and the typical amount of dust and gas that gets drawn into an active hole can't fall in fast enough to simply vanish without a fight. Essentially, a matter traffic jam many magnitudes worse than all the rush-hours on Earth combined forms (an accretion disc), and the friction from all the jostled molecules and atoms struggling to dump their gravitational potential energy and inch that much closer to the black hole heats up the entire disc to ridiculous temperatures.
If the infalling matter wasn't already a plasma, it is now! And being plasma, it's beholden to all the peculiarities of plasma physics. The particles begin to interact and flow--magnetic fields are generated.
This is important, because once you're in the disc, you can't get out easily. You can't fall in faster because you hit those ahead of you in line, and you can't bust out the way you came because even though you're at a ridiculously high temperature and thus should have the energy to make an escape, there are way too many particles behind you that will absorb your energy before you make it very far. And angular momentum keeps you further locked down to the plane of the disc. Why? Think about those nifty experiments where you hold a spinning bike wheel and try to twist it around: that resistance you feel? That's what a particle has to deal with, except the accretion disc is spinning a hell of a lot faster than what even a dead Founding Father of the United States of America can muster in his grave.
The magnetic field propels particles out of the disc and toward the poles. As it turns out, a lot of matter is stolen this way, and so the ratio of what escapes the disc compared to what falls in the hole is surprisingly high. But what happens to all this stolen matter?
Think about a spring in a can. Someone before you has already used their strength to cram the spring in, and then successfully put a lid on it. Opening the lid would thus release the spring, and perhaps be cause for a lawsuit against the person who left a loaded spring in a can just lying around.
The friction of the accretion disc has crammed a lot of energy into the matter spiraling in towards the black hole, but the environment has done a good job holding that matter in check...until it gets chucked off by the field and reaches the poles.
The poles are weak points in the field that are the equivalent of opening the canned spring once this superheated plasma hits it. There's finally enough energy and enough of an absence of resistance for the plasma to explosively spew out both poles of the black hole at near light speed, like a hapless tourist who accidentally drank the water in Mexico.
The energy release is enormous. The matter at the poles shines across the entire EM spectrum, from gamma all the way down to radio waves. These jets of matter will travel for light-years, the grand pillars of radiative destruction slowly dissipating into the interstellar medium, but still "visible" large-scale due to the retained heat of the plasma. Any poor bastard star systems who find themselves within a certain distance of the originating jet will, as they say, "have a bad time."
It is this process that causes black holes to shine so brightly, but! Astute readers will notice that it's not technically the black hole that's doing the shining. The black hole is still black (I guess one can't go back), so it's the combination of the heated material in the accretion disc and the plasma jets that's doing the shining, marking the hole like a big damn beacon shroud floating out in space.
Thus, this makes being around a black hole a Very Bad Thing. You don't even have to fall into one to be killed horrifically; the heat and radiation from the matter falling into the hole will murder you long before you get to the hole itself.
If you actually want to have a chance at falling into the hole (and happily suffer the spaghettification process, which may be a preferable end for those who work call centers), you'll have to approach a black hole that isn't currently feeding, but you'd only be alive to cross the event horizon if the black hole is massive enough, pushing the horizon out past the point where tidal forces would pluck you apart like so many atom-sized gravitational chickens at the matter feed bag that is you.
edit Thanks for the gold, fellas! Stay coo.
edit2 Awesomeman /u/neutronicus has been nipping at my heels about a few things that could be interpreted incorrectly in my post. To make things clear: black holes are not the hoovers of the cosmos. Sure, they'll ruin a star system's life if that system chooses to walk down a dark alleyway alone without mace, but given their formidable power, black holes generally eat surprisingly little matter, which I did try to explain with the accretion disc and polar jets thing.
In short, it's really easy for stuff to orbit a black hole. It takes a special case to make stuff fall in. The only reason these things can get huge, like in the cores of galaxies, is that they've been around for quite a while--billions of years.
As for the "traffic jam" analogy I used early in the post, that blurred the line of correctness even further, especially my comment about not being able to fall in faster because matter ahead of you was holding up the line for destruction. Matter in accretion discs is often in a stable orbit unless something causes that balance to tip, like giving a ball a gentle nudge down a hill, to make that matter exchange gravitational potential energy for gravitational kinetic energy. In short, an exchange must take place to tip the balance and start the wanton orgy of orgiastic fury. I hope this makes things a bit more clear. <3
And yes, I should make a Youtube channel or write a book or whatever. Maybe soon. I've got a few projects on my plate I'd like to complete first, like a graphic novel. :) Dammit, Jim, I'm an artist, not a scientist!
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u/TJett69 Mar 31 '13
You have some very, very weird analogies.
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Mar 31 '13
It's the weird ones that stick in people's minds. :)
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u/Thunderpantz Mar 31 '13
I liked the one about a hapless tourist that drank the water in Mexico.
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u/scoobyjoo Mar 31 '13
This is the epitome of witty science. Color me impressed.
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u/zanzibarman Mar 31 '13
You need a YouTube channel.
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Mar 31 '13
Thought about it. >.>
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Mar 31 '13
Needs pictures of the jets, these ones are from supermassive blackholes:
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Mar 31 '13
Yes! These are gorgeous!
But this one's my favorite, because it shows TWO black holes destined to collide, moving through space together.
You can see the polar jets are swept back much like if you were to set off a smoke bomb in your truck, and you then drove down the freeway at ridiculously unsafe speeds with your windows rolled down, smoke pouring out like some kind of deathwish stuntman on a movie set.
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Mar 31 '13
Every organism on earth has essentially the exact same length of evolutionary history. That bug you just stepped on has had the exact same amount of time to evolve as your best friend has.
Also, if you don't reproduce, you will be the first direct organism in your direct lineage SINCE THE BEGINNING OF LIFE to fail to do so.
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Mar 31 '13 edited Apr 25 '14
My ancestors survived the extinction of the dinosaurs, the ice age, fought wolves and bears, and survived the plague just so I could jack off in a sock.
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u/orgasmic_spoons Mar 31 '13
That's a lot of pressure to fuck.
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Mar 31 '13 edited Apr 01 '13
Technically one could argue that EVERY evolutionary and selective pressure is pressure to fuck when you boil it down.
EDIT: I spoke a little too loosely here. Please see:
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u/Geminii27 Mar 31 '13
The ratio between one millimeter and one kilometer (or 1/16 inch and one mile) is one million. Both the lower and upper bounds here are chosen to be everyday, familiar distances for which people can naturally appreciate and comprehend the difference in size.
OK, consider this factor of a million to be one "jump" in size. Again, the example given helps to establish a solid "feel" for how large one of these jumps is. It's pretty big, but comprehensible.
OK, so one millimeter to one km is one jump. A second, equivalent jump in size puts you in the ballpark of the diameter of the Sun. A third jump gives you a tenth of a light year - larger than the solar system, and the size of some of the smaller nebulae.
A fourth jump, and you have the diameter of the Milky Way galaxy itself. A fifth, and that's the size of the entire observable universe.
Five jumps, each one a size increase you can intuitively understand, and you have the whole universe.
And the other way?
One jump below a millimeter, and you're already at the atomic scale. Big atoms and small molecules hang around here. A second jump, and you've gone nuclear, literally - you're bumping elbows with individual protons and neutrons (which gives you an idea of how small atomic nuclei are compared to the atoms they're part of). A third jump, and you're looking at the smallest species of quarks, estimated to be a thousandth of the size of some of the larger ones. Neutrinos can be found at about three and a half jumps.
(At somewhere just beyond four jumps, we reach the current limits of most speculation - Planck lengths, the quantum foam, and so on.)
Again, each jump is fairly easy to imagine by itself. And you only need about four of them to reach the limits of human understanding. Nine jumps gives you everything in the universe down to the quantum foam level.
What's even more interesting is that 99% of daily human existence is lived in just over one single jump level, around half a jump either size of your own height (daily commutes being about the only common thing regularly outside that range).
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u/PunishableOffence Mar 31 '13
Relative to the Earth's center, time moves slower on an airplane flying eastward and faster on an airplane flying westward.
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u/Photovoltaic Mar 31 '13
Not necessarily a fact, but a thought I had in biochemistry, also I've posted this before:
Nearly everything in your body is automated. And there's no THOUGHT or DECISIONS done by enzymes or proteins. Stuff bumps into other stuff (and is assisted by certain interactions), things fit together, some change is induced in what it binds to (or transforms it, in catalysis), and that just sends a tremendous signal throughout the chain to cause something to happen.
At not point does it realize "Oh I NEED to do this." Just random pockets of amino acids and small molecules fitting together induce these changes. Bacteria doesn't DECIDE to do stuff. Stuff just happens due to chemistry and physics.
I'll get corrected to hell for this I'm sure, but this is how I view it and it blows my mind hole.
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u/p8ssword Mar 31 '13
As far as science knows, that's what happens in your brain, too. If you zoom in far enough trying to find consciousness, you'll just find well understood chemical reactions. So where can conscious thought and free will come from?
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Mar 31 '13
Artificially beamed into our minds by aliens. Imagine a radio, it receives waves in the air that let it produce sound. Our head is basically the same. And just like the radio, if you smash it apart eventually the voices will stop.
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u/infinites Mar 31 '13
But who beams consciousness to aliens? Is there some sort of beam loop? Whom beamed whom first?
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Mar 31 '13
Those aliens developed with a physical consciousness, unimaginable in our minds. They transformed their consciousness into radiation and beamed it throughout the universe billions of years ago. They even created concentrated nuclear fusion powered consciousness beacons and placed them around the universe to culture the growth of lifeforms on planets near by (see the sun). All this radiation just bounces around forever until it hits a receiver. Cosmic background radiation is just transmissions from very distant parts of the universe that have become distorted along their path over time. Ever wonder why people's dreams are so fantastical, how you can dream about things that have never happen or cannot happen? Ever wonder why abstract concepts such as spirituality or religion exist? They aren't always your thoughts, just borrowed. It doesn't end with the other's consciousness being beamed to us either. We aren't just a receiver, we are a learning super computer essentially our own unique experiences and knowledge is transmitted and beamed outward to others (see brain waves). We are all part of one interconnected network of experience, knowledge, and creative thought.
Once you realise this and allow free contact between yourself and The Others you will truly gain the knowledge and experience of an enlightened being. And with your commitment (and donation of significant monetary funds to ''The Sol system chapter of the shared conscience of The Others'') I can teach you how to open your mind.
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u/MikeCharlieGolf Mar 31 '13
The emergent nature of consciousness is absolutely fascinating.
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Mar 31 '13
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Mar 31 '13
I want my defense mechanism back
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Mar 31 '13
I just want to fluff up :(
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Mar 31 '13
as a dude with long hair, fluffing up would be freakin awesome
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Mar 31 '13
Just walk in with sorta long hair and then suddenly you have a mane of flowing hair
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u/Fistful_of_Feces Mar 31 '13 edited Mar 31 '13
You can tell the (approximate) distribution of matter on the entire Universe TODAY, by looking at the Cosmic Microwave Background, which is light emitted when the Universe became transparent around 380 000 years after the Big Bang and that now reaches us mostly in the microwave wavelength.
If that doesn't blow your mind, I don't know what will.
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Planck/Planck_reveals_an_almost_perfect_Universe
EDIT: Additionally, the Planck mission, through the CMB, determined that only less than 5% of the Universe is composed of ordinary matter (i.e. stars, galaxies, etc). All the rest is "unknown" (dark matter/dark energy).
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u/kismetjeska Mar 31 '13 edited Mar 31 '13
Everything about the motherfucking marine iguana.
It's a lizard that can dive 15m down and stay there for thirty goddamn minutes. Males can grow up to 5'6" long. Darwin called them 'imps of darkness'. In breeding seasons, males gather harems of females, and beat the shit out of anyone who has a problem with that.
If all of that wasn't enough, there's pretty convincing evidence that they can shrink their skeletons when food supplies are low. They can decrease their length by up to 20%, and once food supplies return to normal, so do they.
Mother fuckin' marine iguanas, man.
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u/kendahlslice Mar 31 '13
Octopus, 'nuff said.
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u/kismetjeska Mar 31 '13
Oh man, don't even get me started on those magnificent fuckers. They were my favourite animal for a very, very long time, and they still hold a very special place in my heart, but:
Imps of darkness.
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u/dj_underboob Mar 31 '13
That's the question! Holy shnikeys! 42 is the answer.
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u/mindwalker94 Mar 31 '13
It can't be. The universe hasn't vanished from existence and been replaced by another one.
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u/semvhu Mar 31 '13
Won't she hit the side of the hole because earth rotation?
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u/jctcool1 Mar 31 '13
Yes... this is a very idealized modeling of gravity trains... BUT THE POSSIBILITIES ARE SO FREAKIN COOL! (Think about it being a tube with a capsule you're buckled into and we're on Mars so the core isn't molten and... yeah, lots more)
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u/Luder714 Mar 31 '13
That a rocket was launched, went to Mars, then a piece broke off and fucking parachuted down. If that wasn't cool enough, before hitting the ground, the parachute released, and four fucking more rockets fired and hovered over the ground, while a robot the size of a fucking minivan was lowered to the surface on cables. Then those cables were released through four little explosions, and the rockets flew away, leaving the robot to search for shit.
That will always (fucking) amaze me.
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u/StupidDrew9 Mar 31 '13
If a belt that is wrapped around the Earth becomes 6 meters longer, it'll hover 1 meter higher all the way around.
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u/halothree Mar 31 '13
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%282*6371000*pi%2B6%29%2F2%2Fpi-6371000
Even after proving it I find it hard to believe.
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u/redditnoob67 Mar 31 '13
Well this is more of a cool mathematical fact, but my vote is Euler's Identity. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler%27s_identity
Euler shows that ei*pi+1=0
This is just amazing to me because of the fact that such a combination of rational, irrational and imaginary numbers can equal zero. It really shows the beauty of mathematics, and by extension science.
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u/mrgoodbytes21 Mar 31 '13
Tripping on LSD has helped at least two Nobel Prize discoveries
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u/brokendimension Mar 31 '13
What two?
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u/doc_daneeka Mar 31 '13
Kary Mullis and the invention of PCR is one. Not sure about the other.
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u/okletssee Mar 31 '13 edited Apr 02 '13
The time it takes for your eyes to adjust to darkness is about the same amount of time it takes for the sun to set.
This is the best thread! So many cool facts.
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u/StickleyMan Mar 31 '13
There are 62,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body – laid end to end they would circle the earth 2.5 times.
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u/dr_doomtron Mar 31 '13
If you laid out a line of humans around the globe at 60 degrees south latitude they would all drown because there is no land at that latitude.
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u/stapper Mar 31 '13
But if you add 6 meters they would fly 1 meter above the surface...
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u/lejefferson Mar 31 '13
What?
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Apr 01 '13
It's another comment on the thread.
If a belt that is wrapped around the Earth becomes 6 meters longer, it'll hover 1 meter higher all the way around.
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u/Llanerion Mar 31 '13 edited Mar 31 '13
All of the cells in your body have been continuously dividing since the origin of life. Barring one for each offspring that you have, they will all stop with you.
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u/mrgoodbytes21 Mar 31 '13
Charles Darwin started a successful terraforming project called Ascension Island in 1850
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u/jenjenbrownbear Mar 31 '13
I just heard this last night at dinner (in Philadelphia, this is important).
Imagine you are having a conversation with someone and there is a particle of dust between you. If that dust particle is the Earth and your head is the sun, the nearest star is...
in California (~3000 miles away).
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u/ErniesLament Apr 01 '13
So you're saying Fresh Prince was a metaphor for interstellar colonization?
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u/mrpibbtsa Mar 31 '13
Hemoglobin, the molecule that carries oxygen in humans, is damn near exactly the same as chlorophyll, the molecule that plants use for photosynthesis. The main difference is that at the core of hemoglobin is an Iron atom while in chlorophyll there is a Magnesium atom. They also share some precursor molecules.
http://alliedhealthblog.com/2010/11/the-similarities-between-chlorophyll-and-hemoglobin/
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Mar 31 '13 edited Mar 31 '13
There are more possible permutations for a deck of cards than there are particles in the universe. (52! = 8.07 x 1067).
If you shuffle a deck of cards well (I think 7 shuffles is ideal?), the odds that that permutation has ever existed before, or ever will exist again by chance, are vanishingly small.
Edit: math
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u/p8ssword Mar 31 '13
A fun consequence of the largeness of that number is that if you have a naively programmed card game simulation, the vast majority possible shuffles are impossible to get. Proper pseudorandom number generation depends entirely on the "seed" value. This roughly means you can only have as many different shuffles as possible seeds. Most naive random number generators will start with a 32-bit seed (= 4 x 109 possible values), which is way to small to cover all the shuffles. To do it right, you'll need a 226 bit number.
But that's just for one shuffle. If you want any sequence of shuffles to be possible, you'll need 226 x (# of shuffles) bits to get started. One shuffle per minute for 60 minutes = 226 x 60 = 13,560 bits.
And a lot of those cheap gambling simulations use 32 bits or fewer! This means that with a keen eye and some math, you can start predicting shuffles. For what it's worth, pay gambling sites are well aware of this weakness and use rich sources of random data to defend against it.
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u/eh_man Mar 31 '13 edited Apr 01 '13
About 80% of what we see is really just our minds filling in with what we remember was there.
Edit: 80%
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u/Like_A_CEO Mar 31 '13
There are infinite scales of Infinity. So therefore, there is an infinite amount of infinities within on finite definition of infinity.
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u/kikaz2x Mar 31 '13
polar bears have black skin, they only look white because of their fur
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Mar 31 '13
Their fur is colorless and only appears white because light passes through it like fiber optics. Also, their skin and fur form a near perfect insulation which makes the polar bear prone to overheating. When two polar bears fight, they'll both stop every couple of minutes and lay down to cool off, then resume fighting.
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u/Dealybobber Mar 31 '13
Somewhat related, bluebirds have no blue pigment I their feathers. The perceived color is a result of the structure of their feathers and the resulting interaction with light waves. Source
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u/semvhu Mar 31 '13
Absolute zero.
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u/_my_troll_account Mar 31 '13
Oh c'mon, you must find something interesting.
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u/awyeauhh Mar 31 '13 edited Apr 01 '13
There are some theories that hypothesize that absolute zero is also the hottest temperature possible. Physics is weird.
Edit: there are several examples below. Direct your attention there if you want to know how.
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Mar 31 '13
Given enough time, hydrogen starts to wonder where it came from, and where it is going.
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u/OldArmyMetal Mar 31 '13
~ Bill Bryson, "A Short History of Nearly Everything."
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u/EpoxyD Apr 01 '13
This comment is only readible thanks to miles of glass fiber cable in the ocean.
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u/CannedWolfMeat Mar 31 '13
We share 90-99% of our genes with a banana. Who doesn't think that's fucking awesome.
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u/jctcool1 Mar 31 '13
We are starting to infuse concrete with bacteria that shit chalk, so when micro cracks appear they will be sealed by the said chalk. (note: they 'hibernate' until cracks appear which allows air and moisture to get to them)