Some mind bogglingly awesome science facts

Some amazing science facts, from www.facebook.com...



And that, my friends, is why you can never go home again. The "where" of home got left behind Each second you are away from the "where" it was your were one second ago. And that direction has no reverse mode.

Goodbye old world! Hello future now!

The Earth is smoother than a billiard ball.

How smooth is a billiard ball? According to the World Pool-Billiard Association, a pool ball is 2.25 inches in diameter, and has a tolerance of +/- 0.005 inches. In other words, it must have no pits or bumps more than 0.005 inches in height. That’s pretty smooth. The ratio of the size of an allowable bump to the size of the ball is 0.005/2.25 = about 0.
002.

The Earth has a diameter of about 12,735 kilometers (on average, see below for more on this). Using the smoothness ratio from above, the Earth would be an acceptable pool ball if it had no bumps (mountains) or pits (trenches) more than 12,735 km x 0.00222 = about 28 km in size.

The highest point on Earth is the top of Mt. Everest, at 8.85 km. The deepest point on Earth is the Marianas Trench, at about 11 km deep.

Hey, those are within the tolerances! So for once, an urban legend is correct. If you shrank the Earth down to the size of a billiard ball, it would be smoother.

But would it be round enough to qualify? That's a different matter completely ... it’s not a perfect sphere as it spins.

:w:

Every now and then you hear something which grabs your attention. This captured my attention: There is a cloud of alcohol (ethyl alcohol – the happy juice found in beer, wine, and spirits) floating in space. This isn’t a small cloud either. There is enough alcohol in this cloud to make fill 400 trillion trillion pints of beer. That is one hell of a keg party.

The bad news is it is 10,000 light years away in the constellation of Aquila. It’s unlikely we could get to the cloud any time soon. The booze cloud, known as G34.3, is so large (1000 times the size of our solar system) our solar system could drown itself inside many times over.

Pretty nuts, eh?




scientificbritain.com...

A pint of ocean. Let’s say you poured a pint of water into the ocean, then stirred the ocean thoroughly, or waited long enough for the ocean currents to mix the molecules of water of your pint with those of the ocean. If you travelled to the opposite side of the Earth and scooped up another pint from the ocean, how many molecules from the original glass of water would you now have? None? One? Well, the answer is actually closer to eight thousand—provided that the world’s oceans were thoroughly mixed, which doesn’t sound very physically realistic. What many may found baffling, though, is that there exist far more molecules of water in one pint glass than pints of (salty) water in the world’s oceans. For those of you not put off by a few lines of maths, the relevant back-of-the-envelope estimate follows. [.....]

* We shed our skin cells about every 35 days
* Red blood cells live about 120 days, platelets 6 days and white cells less than a day
* Most of the adult skeleton is replaced about every 10 years
* The average age of a fat cell seems to be about 10 years
* a 25-year-old heart replaces about 1% of all its cardiomyocytes (heart muscle cells ) over the course of a year, while a 75-year-old heart replaces about half a percent
* our neocortical neurons, the cell type that mediates much of our cognition, are produced prenatally and retained for our entire lifespan

Richard Dawkins quotes the above text in the picture at a TED talk, you can watch it here: www.ted.com...

And finally, the first person to name everyone on the left hand side wins!

Fun thread, a pleasant way to be made to feel stupid Some of those I had heard before, others I did not know. S&F

Nice list of cool facts.

As to the last, off the top of my head.

Hawking, Currie, Tesla, Eisenstein, Freud, Ayaan Hirsi Al, Sagan and Darwin.

Im drawing a blank on the two below Ayaan Hirsi Al... I know the one on the bottom its on the tip of my tongue...

That was fun.

I'm disappointed that there were three in the last picture I couldn't name.

Cool thread.

I have no idea who the broad with the beer is.

reply to post by ZeuZZ

Originally posted by ZeuZZ

[color=FFDD6E]Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made.

Now if that doesn't make your hair stand up on the back of your neck, read it until it does, because it is important.

If that↑ truly was important, shouldn't it be written in the form of a complete sentence?

Originally posted by ZeuZZ

Not a single atom that is in your body today was there when that event took place... Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to become you.

The color of my teeth disagrees with that assessment. Why are they not still just as bright white as they were when they first came in?




P.S. My mind was boggled before I even opened this thread, because immediately after reading the title, I went to www.merriam-webster.com... and discovered that 'bogglingly' actually is accepted as a real word. lol I thought you made it up.

really cool ! s&f!
missed 3 on the last one,but the fat,ugly,annoying chick on the right isn't worth mentioning!

The sentiment "you're what's wrong with the world" is rather alienating, sorry.

Speaking of size comparisons, get this: if an atom were the size of the observable universe, a cosmic string would only be the size of a tree.

reply to post by BrokenCircles


The atoms in the not-so-white color of your teeth are exchanging themselves too. The macro world makes such tiny changes hard to see.

Nice post. As said by others I was aware of some and some were new to me. Thanks.

I have to say though, the last picture sums up society pretty dam good.

Originally posted by ZeuZZ
And finally, the first person to name everyone on the left hand side wins!

edit on 30-9-2012 by ZeuZZ because: (no reason given)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Carl Sagan, Christopher Hitchens, Thomas Paine, Stephen Hawking, Nikola Tesla, Marie Curie, Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin

Originally posted by krossfyter

Originally posted by ZeuZZ
And finally, the first person to name everyone on the left hand side wins!

edit on 30-9-2012 by ZeuZZ because: (no reason given)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Carl Sagan, Christopher Hitchens, Thomas Paine, Stephen Hawking, Nikola Tesla, Marie Curie, Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin

Marie Curie - tick
Nikola Tesla - tick
Stephen Hawking - tick
Sigmund Freud - tick
Albert Einstein - tick
Ayaan Hirsi Ali - tick
Christopher Hitchens - tick
Thomas Paine - tick
Charles Darwin - tick
Carl Sagan - tick

We have a winner

Kudos

I'm not 100% sure why Hitchens is on there, as he was not a scientist more a well known atheist and journalist that argued against religion and was pretty controversial in some of his views ... but apart from that they are all great scientists.

Kind of cheating though, others before might have done some of the work for you

Originally posted by benrl
Nice list of cool facts.

As to the last, off the top of my head.

Hawking, Currie, Tesla, Eisenstein, Freud, Ayaan Hirsi Al, Sagan and Darwin.

Im drawing a blank on the two below Ayaan Hirsi Al... I know the one on the bottom its on the tip of my tongue...

Yeah I did too, Nevermind answered as I posted but I also missed Ayaan Hirsi Al, but didn't care...whoops. Rest were cake...liked to have seen Newton and maybe Oppenheimer

reply to post by EllaMarina

Originally posted by EllaMarina
reply to post by BrokenCircles

 

The atoms in the not-so-white color of your teeth are exchanging themselves too. The macro world makes such tiny changes hard to see.

That doesn't answer my question.

I am talking about a change that can be clearly seen.

If they are constantly replenishing themselves with new one's replacing the old, then there should not be such a clearly defined difference between their appearance now, and their appearance many years ago.

reply to post by ZeuZZ


I am not really a fan of these kind of half-facts. Some errors:

*The earth isn't a ship. It has no propulsion nor a steering mechanism.

*The stated tolerance seems to apply to shape and not smoothness. Looks like the earth fails the test for shape, and we don't know the smoothness of an average billiard ball from that definition.

*You can't brew beer from alcohol.

I also missed Ayaan Hirsi Al, but didn't care...whoops.

To be fair, I don't see her as being worthy of the list either. The picture was not made by me, her and hitchens I would have replaced with Ptolemy, Newton and Gallileo. Especially Newton.

This talk by Tyson (as ever) sums up my opinion exactly on great yet under appreciated scientists in history.

Start from 6:30 for his comments on Galileo. Or 8:00 for his awesome comments on Newton.

I don't know what you know about Issac Newton, but from what I have read of his, it tells me there is no greater genius to ever have walked this earth. I don't know if you've ever felt this about someone, but if you just read what he wrote, line by line by line, this guy was deeply plugged into the machinery of the universe. He is un-impeachably brilliant.

Let me read some of Newtons writings. And he did this all before he was 26. When he talks about motion, there is no reference to god. When he talks about his two body force that he deduced, this universal law of gravitation there is no mention of god. As he understood it. He was on top of it. He was there. Even though, before that the understanding of the motions of the planets was given unto god, as no one could explain it. So what you have is Isaac Newton abandoning all reference to god. Until he realized if all you do is calculate the two body problem, the sun and earth, the moon and earth, etc, then the sun and earth are closer to mars, and then closer to the sun again, then here, and there, and all these mini tugs get way too complex.

And he realizes that applying these simple explanations to the solar system can not explain it. So what does he say? He's at his limits. He can not account for how we have stayed this way. God is no where until you get to the general showroom, later in his work, I quote "But it is not to be conceived that mere mechanical causes could give birth to so many regular motions. This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being."

So there we have one of the greatest scientists of the millennium invoking intelligent design, at the limits of his knowledge. And I want to put on the table that you have people that want to put intelligent design into the classrooms, and yet you also have the most brilliant people that ever walked this earth doing the same thing. So it's a deeper challenge than simply educating the public [...]

*The earth isn't a ship. It has no propulsion nor a steering mechanism.

But it's a nice and novel way to think about it, isn't it?

It's propulsion mechanism is technically it's already existing momentum (p=mv) which has next to no resistance, a titanic mass and large velocity; thus the nearly constant velocity. It's steering mechanism is the suns gravity. It's always accelerating directly towards the sun, the reason it orbits the sun is due to Newton's First Law and the equilibrium of the forces involved.

*The stated tolerance seems to apply to shape and not smoothness. Looks like the earth fails the test for shape, and we don't know the smoothness of an average billiard ball from that definition.

If you actually read all of the text, you will see this is addressed. The earth is round, but not spherical. Since the Earth spins, there is a centrifugal force outward that is a maximum at the Earth’s equator, making our Blue Marble bulge out, like a basketball with a guy sitting on it. This type of shape is called an oblate spheroid.

I will quote it again.

But would it be round enough to qualify? That's a different matter completely ... it’s not a perfect sphere as it spins.

*You can't brew beer from alcohol.

Correct. But you can still get absolutely pissed off your face on ethyl alcohol

:w:

reply to post by ZeuZZ


If they were wanting to show more women Jane Goodall would have been a most excellent choice IMHO!

One of the better posts I've read here in a while - thanks!

The pints in the ocean thing just doesn't seem possible, but is mathematically correct.

The Steve Grand quote blew my mind.

Originally posted by ZeuZZ

*The earth isn't a ship. It has no propulsion nor a steering mechanism.

But it's a nice and novel way to think about it, isn't it?

It's propulsion mechanism is technically it's already existing momentum (p=mv) which has next to no resistance, a titanic mass and large velocity; thus the nearly constant velocity. It's steering mechanism is the suns gravity. It's always accelerating directly towards the sun, the reason it orbits the sun is due to Newton's First Law and the equilibrium of the forces involved.

It may be a fun way to think about it to some people although I think it is a bit misleading. But its not a "fact", which is my main complaint.

If you actually read all of the text, you will see this is addressed. The earth is round, but not spherical. Since the Earth spins, there is a centrifugal force outward that is a maximum at the Earth’s equator, making our Blue Marble bulge out, like a basketball with a guy sitting on it. This type of shape is called an oblate spheroid.

I will quote it again.

I actually read the whole text, and it is not addressed. My critique is that the tolerance of a billiard ball is not about smoothness, but about shape. So the tolerance does not say something about its smoothness. The fact that the writer realized that the earth has no perfect spherical shape does not compensate for this error. Well, at least I think it is an error. But I would definitely not call it a fact based on the information provided.

The thing that kind of bothers me with these kind of "facts" is that people can get wrong ideas about reality. Its not much of an effort to do it right. Though the other images may be correct, I didn't check.