I bet you didnt know that

Wibbs · 12-09-2018 9:16pm

dxhound2005 wrote: »

Only 1% of all life is found in the oceans.

That's can't be right D. AFAIR the oceans make up closer to 60% of all life on earth? Consider that in a drop of seawater you can find on average 10 million viruses, a million bacteria and a few thousand other little living things.

dxhound2005 · 12-09-2018 9:20pm

Wibbs wrote: »

That's wrong. AFAIR the oceans make up closer to 60% of all life on earth?

You could be right. Scientists estimate that 86% of species remain undiscovered.

Ipso · 12-09-2018 9:25pm

dxhound2005 wrote: »

You could be right. Scientists estimate that 86% of species remain undiscovered.

They probably would want to remain undiscovered.

dxhound2005 · 12-09-2018 9:29pm

Reading the Guardian link again, it is 1% of all biomass which lives in the oceans.

Another surprise is that the teeming life revealed in the oceans by the recent BBC television series Blue Planet II turns out to represent just 1% of all biomass. The vast majority of life is land-based and a large chunk – an eighth – is bacteria buried deep below the surface.

Professor Moriarty · 12-09-2018 9:53pm

Wibbs wrote: »

Ancient Rome at one time had a piss tax. They also placed large cauldrons on streets to collect the stuff. Wasn't just for tanning either. They used it to wash clothes(steep, then rinse with water of course) and even as a mouthwash. Yep. They thought piss would clean and whiten teeth. They also added ground up pumice to piss to make toothpaste. And they were somewhat right. The ammonia(IIRC) in piss will whiten and clean teeth and kill bacteria. One Roman dude in denouncing a fellow politician called him "piss face" because his teeth were so white. Urine was added to mouthwashes until the 1600s.

Diabetes was diagnosed by doctors who would taste piss. If it was sweet you had it.

I visited Pompeii two years ago. As part of the tour, the guide showed a laundry where slaves washed clothes by stamping on them in large vats full of urine and bicarbonate. It was one of the worst jobs to have as the ammonia and bicarbonate would attack the skin causing it to crack and become infected. Thus most laundry slaves died young of gangrene.

gozunda · 12-09-2018 9:59pm

Zadkiel wrote: »

Who mentioned definition, i said methods of measurement. My post was a comment on where the confusion could possibly have come from but anyway...

'Bill. Several types of bill measurements can be
found in the modern literature. The most
common and replicable is the bill length mea-
25

Several types of bill measurements can be
found in the modern literature. The most
common and replicable is the bill length mea-
sured from the anterior edge of the nostril to
the tip (Baldwin et al. 1931: 16). This measurement
is popular because in most taxa both
ends of the measurement are readily definable
points where calipers can be placed. Two
other methods, the lengths of total culmen
and exposed culmen, attempt to measure the
entire length of the bill. Total culmen measurements
extend to the bill tip from the
notch on the forehead where the base of the
culmen meets the skull (usually just inside the
feathers on the forehead; Baldwin et al. 1931:
11). Exposed culmen measurements extend
to the bill tip from the point where the tips of
the forehead feathers begin to hide the culmen
(Baldwin et al. 1931: 11). This is not an
easily defined point, and hence this is the
most variable of these bill measurements
(pers. observ.).'

ORNITOLOGIA NEOTROPICAL 9: 23–30, 1998
© The Neotropical Ornithological Society
SUGGESTIONS FOR MEASURING EXTERNAL CHARACTERS OF
BIRDS
Kevin Winker
University of Alaska Museum, 907 Yukon Drive, Fairbanks, Alaska, 99775, U.S.A.

And for such discussion, thus Boards.ie was created ...

retalivity · 12-09-2018 10:02pm

The highest peak in Belize is called Doyle's Delight, in the Cockcomb mountain range.

Strangely, It is named after Arthur Conan Doyle

StupidLikeAFox · 12-09-2018 10:08pm

valoren wrote: »

"The Shed at Dulwich”

If you search for it you can also find the story about when he actually opened and had some customers in. They bought frozen stuff from Iceland (the supermarket) and heated it in the microwave and the people thought it was amazing.

Wibbs · 12-09-2018 10:18pm

dxhound2005 wrote: »

Reading the Guardian link again, it is 1% of all biomass which lives in the oceans.

Another surprise is that the teeming life revealed in the oceans by the recent BBC television series Blue Planet II turns out to represent just 1% of all biomass. The vast majority of life is land-based and a large chunk – an eighth – is bacteria buried deep below the surface.

Shoot me down in flames D, but I still don't buy it. 1) there is more water than land. 2) Even in the stygian depths there is life and lots of it, and that's the stuff we see with the Mark 1 Human Eyeball. The deep ooze at the bottom of oceans is positively teeming with bacteria and other microscopic life. Consider the white cliffs of Dover and their associated deposits in England and France. They're made up almost entirely of the microscopic skeletons of marine life deposited in an ancient and small enough sea. 3) if there are bacteria buried below the surface of the dry bits, there are almost certainly the same numbers buried below the wet bits. If not more, given water and energy is what feeds them. 4) then there's the sheer volume of water itself across all depths which contains both micro and macro organisms. Granted the lion's share of the latter and the most diverse is at shallower depths, but send down a collecting jar to say 3000 metres below sea level and a litre of seawater is going to be positively stuffed with a myriad of creatures.

Could there be more biomass in the "dry" bits? I'd not have an issue with that D, but the claim that the entirety of the "wet" bits only has one percent of Earth's biomass? No way. That has got to be a typo, or some scientists were at the distillation kit in the lab and cooked up a doozie of a beverage.

dxhound2005 · 12-09-2018 10:26pm

I suppose one way to look at it is that there is a lot of grass growing on land. Vast areas of the ocean floors would be devoid of plant life, just because of the enormous depths. So a lot more biomass on the land surface probably. I'm just guessing.

New Home · 12-09-2018 10:28pm

The article quotes this as its source, but I'm too tired to try and concentrate long enough to make sense of it.

dxhound2005 · 12-09-2018 10:33pm

This might be the most relevant section.

The Distribution of Biomass Across Environments and Trophic Modes.
Examining global biomass in different environments exposes stark differences between terrestrial and marine environments. The ocean covers 71% of the Earth’s surface and occupies a much larger volume than the terrestrial environment, yet land biomass, at ≈470 Gt C, is about two orders of magnitude higher than the ≈6 Gt C in marine biomass, as shown in Fig. 2A. Even though there is a large difference in the biomass content of the terrestrial and marine environments, the primary productivity of the two environments is roughly equal (33). For plants, we find that most biomass is concentrated in terrestrial environments (plants have only a small fraction of marine biomass, <1 Gt C, in the form of green algae and seagrass; Fig. 2B). For animals, most biomass is concentrated in the marine environment, and for bacteria and archaea, most biomass is concentrated in deep subsurface environments. We note that several of the results in Fig. 2B should be interpreted with caution due to the large uncertainty associated with some of the estimates, mostly those of total terrestrial protists, marine fungi, and contributions from deep subsurface environments.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1 · 12-09-2018 10:38pm

Wibbs wrote: »

Shoot me down in flames D, but I still don't buy it. 1) there is more water than land. 2) Even in the stygian depths there is life and lots of it, and that's the stuff we see with the Mark 1 Human Eyeball. The deep ooze at the bottom of oceans is positively teeming with bacteria and other microscopic life. Consider the white cliffs of Dover and their associated deposits in England and France. They're made up almost entirely of the microscopic skeletons of marine life deposited in an ancient and small enough sea. 3) if there are bacteria buried below the surface of the dry bits, there are almost certainly the same numbers buried below the wet bits. If not more, given water and energy is what feeds them. 4) then there's the sheer volume of water itself across all depths which contains both micro and macro organisms. Granted the lion's share of the latter and the most diverse is at shallower depths, but send down a collecting jar to say 3000 metres below sea level and a litre of seawater is going to be positively stuffed with a myriad of creatures.

Could there be more biomass in the "dry" bits? I'd not have an issue with that D, but the claim that the entirety of the "wet" bits only has one percent of Earth's biomass? No way. That has got to be a typo, or some scientists were at the distillation kit in the lab and cooked up a doozie of a beverage.

Total global biomass is about 560 billion tonnes. Most of this biomass is found on land, with only 5 to 10 billion tonnes in the oceans.

gozunda · 12-09-2018 11:08pm

Wibbs wrote: »

Ancient Rome at one time had a piss tax. They also placed large cauldrons on streets to collect the stuff. Wasn't just for tanning either. They used it to wash clothes(steep, then rinse with water of course) and even as a mouthwash. Yep. They thought piss would clean and whiten teeth. They also added ground up pumice to piss to make toothpaste. And they were somewhat right. The ammonia(IIRC) in piss will whiten and clean teeth and kill bacteria. One Roman dude in denouncing a fellow politician called him "piss face" because his teeth were so white. Urine was added to mouthwashes until the 1600s.

Diabetes was diagnosed by doctors who would taste piss. If it was sweet you had it.

Non only did ancient Romans miss out on the benefits of stirrups for their saddles and gunpowder (see previous post

) - they famously did without the benefit of soap. Pliny the Elder (before his death in 79 AD following the eruption of mount Vesuvius) stated in his writings - 'Historia Naturalis' that Soap was something mainly used by Gaulish and Germanic men but not so much by their women ...

Ineedaname · 12-09-2018 11:11pm

Wibbs wrote: »

Shoot me down in flames D, but I still don't buy it. 1) there is more water than land. 2) Even in the stygian depths there is life and lots of it, and that's the stuff we see with the Mark 1 Human Eyeball. The deep ooze at the bottom of oceans is positively teeming with bacteria and other microscopic life. Consider the white cliffs of Dover and their associated deposits in England and France. They're made up almost entirely of the microscopic skeletons of marine life deposited in an ancient and small enough sea. 3) if there are bacteria buried below the surface of the dry bits, there are almost certainly the same numbers buried below the wet bits. If not more, given water and energy is what feeds them. 4) then there's the sheer volume of water itself across all depths which contains both micro and macro organisms. Granted the lion's share of the latter and the most diverse is at shallower depths, but send down a collecting jar to say 3000 metres below sea level and a litre of seawater is going to be positively stuffed with a myriad of creatures.

Could there be more biomass in the "dry" bits? I'd not have an issue with that D, but the claim that the entirety of the "wet" bits only has one percent of Earth's biomass? No way. That has got to be a typo, or some scientists were at the distillation kit in the lab and cooked up a doozie of a beverage.

It's not really that hard to imagine. While bacteria are abundant they are nothing compared to plants.

On land plants need to grow tall in order to compete for light. As they get bigger they obviously require more mass to support their weight. On top of that they need large roots to absorb nutrients from the ground.

In the water they have buoyancy to support them and nutrients are more evenly dispersed so they have no need for large roots.

Capt'n Midnight · 12-09-2018 11:24pm

New Home wrote: »

The article quotes this as its source, but I'm too tired to try and concentrate long enough to make sense of it.

There's a lot of carbon stored in plant stems and tree trunks. Works out about 4/7ths of all the biomass.

Exclude that and the living parts of plants still represent 4/7ths of all the remaining biomass, and then bacteria are three quarters of the rest.

F1.medium.gif

larger version http://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2018/05/15/1711842115/F1.large.jpg

F2.medium.gif

larger version http://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/115/25/6506/F2.large.jpg

BaZmO* · 12-09-2018 11:59pm

On the subject of biomass, the amount of ants on earth, by weight, is greater than the amount of humans by weight.

pleas advice · 13-09-2018 12:14am

by 2050 there will be the same weight of plastic in the oceans as fish...

(or will there?)

So how much plastic is there in the ocean, and how much will there be in 2050? We don't know, but probably a lot. How many fish? We don't really know but certainly a lot. And when will one overtake the other? We definitely do not know.

Capt'n Midnight · 13-09-2018 12:54am

BaZmO* wrote: »

On the subject of biomass, the amount of ants on earth, by weight, is greater than the amount of humans by weight.

Land mammals by weight

Whales at 80m tonnes* outweigh wild land animals at 30m tonnes

*Where do you weigh whales ? At a whale weigh station.

gozunda · 13-09-2018 7:24am

BaZmO* wrote: »

On the subject of biomass, the amount of ants on earth, by weight, is greater than the amount of humans by weight.

On the subject of Ants, in 2002 researchers announced that they had found Earth's biggest "super organism" in Europe, made up of a network of communicating worker ants spanning more than 3,700 miles.

The ants are Argentine ants of the species, Linepithema humile, and are found in millions of nests in a supercolony stretching from northern Italy, through the south of France to the Atlantic coast of Spain, in what is thought to be the largest co-operative unit of individual organisms ever discovered.

RIGOLO · 13-09-2018 7:36am

New Home wrote: »

Half inspired by/half stolen from another thread...

In the mid-1800s, paper was made using rags, mostly cotton and linen. However, soon the raw material began to become scarce, so a new source was found: Egyptian mummies (of which, apparently, there was an abundance- by 1856, the New York Tribune was able to report that about two and a quarter million pounds of rags had been imported from Egypt.)! Their bandages were unravelled, torn into tiny pieces and pulped, just like rags used to be. It was a very cheap raw material, and duty-free, too, so, since it wasn't compulsory to declare its provenance, often the cargos were just recorded as "rags".

Paper is still being manufactured in this way at the Moulin Richard de Bas near Ambert in the Auvergne region , France.
And has been since 1326.

http://www.richarddebas.fr/content/11-photos-interieures

It is a water-wheel power generated operation, taking rags and linen to make and press paper. You can make your own, its a good day out and experience if your in the area and have kids.

CruelCoin · 13-09-2018 9:15am

Of all people who play poker live or online, most people are losing players.

Approx 60% losing, 20% breaking even, 15% winning some, 5% winning lots.

But almost everyone tells you they're breaking even or winning. Funny that.

CruelCoin · 13-09-2018 9:18am

The territory of Nevada was rushing to become a state in time for the 1864 presidential election.

After writing a state constitution with only days to spare, they sent all 16,543 words of it to Congress via telegram.

Transmission took 2 full days and cost $4,303.27 (over $67,000 today.)

2 days on the clicker!

CruelCoin · 13-09-2018 9:19am

I feel like you guys would love this subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/

CruelCoin · 13-09-2018 9:20am

gozunda wrote: »

On the subject of Ants, in 2002 researchers announced that they had found Earth's biggest "super organism" in Europe, made up of a network of communicating worker ants spanning more than 3,700 miles.

The ants are Argentine ants of the species, Linepithema humile, and are found in millions of nests in a supercolony stretching from northern Italy, through the south of France to the Atlantic coast of Spain, in what is thought to be the largest co-operative unit of individual organisms ever discovered.

On the topic of super organisms:

The largest single living organism is a honey fungus measuring 2.4 miles (3.8 km) across in the Blue Mountains in Oregon

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141114-the-biggest-organism-in-the-world

CruelCoin · 13-09-2018 9:27am

You could stop a hurricane like "irma" by shooting at it.

All it would take is thousands of miniguns continuously for a day.

"So how many bullets are we going to need? If there's 125 trillion joules in the storm, and 3300 in a bullet, we'd need 125 TJ/3300 J = 3.79*1010 rounds to completely undo Irma. 109 is a billion, so that means 37.9 billion rounds. A quick search around the web tells us that 10-12 billion is a good guess for the number of bullets manufactured annually, so we'd need a truly alarming ammo stockpile to begin with.

But how much firepower are we going to need here? Let's say we've convinced the Commander in Chief that this is an issue of national security, and we've got the resources of the entire DoD at our disposal—all the manpower and miniguns we need—but we've only got 24 hours to disperse the storm.

To fire off the necessary 37.9B rounds from a single minigun operating continuously at 6,000 rounds per minute would take 4387 days, or twelve years. That's not going to do us much good for stopping the storm—but it means that, if we want to get it done in 24 hours, all we need is 4387 miniguns!"

http://physicsbuzz.physicscentral.com/2017/09/could-we-really-stop-hurricane-with.html

RIGOLO · 13-09-2018 9:44am

the purple tin wrote: »

Red wine has no taste. The flavour you get while drinking it is actually coming from the smell.
The next time you have a head cold drink some and it will taste like water.

NOT TO REOPEN THE WHOLE WHETHER RED WINE HAS A TASTE DEBATE .. but on the topic of wine, we can all agree that recent wines from certain regions do have gamma radiation fallout from both Chernobyl and post 1945.

And this fallout has been used to authenticate the age of expensive wines.

So next time your having your favourite tipple you can impress your friends by saying, yes I can really taste the post 1945 , Cesium - 137 coming thru in the bouquet..

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/06/03/318241738/how-atomic-particles-became-the-smoking-gun-in-wine-fraud-mystery

CruelCoin · 13-09-2018 10:52am

The most searched for term on the Bing search engine has been "Google" for 28 months running.

RIP Bing

New Home · 13-09-2018 11:12am

RIGOLO wrote: »

NOT TO REOPEN THE WHOLE WHETHER RED WINE HAS A TASTE DEBATE .. but on the topic of wine, we can all agree that recent wines from certain regions do have gamma radiation fallout from both Chernobyl and post 1945.

And this fallout has been used to authenticate the age of expensive wines.

So next time your having your favourite tipple you can impress your friends by saying, yes I can really taste the post 1945 , Cesium - 137 coming thru in the bouquet..

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/06/03/318241738/how-atomic-particles-became-the-smoking-gun-in-wine-fraud-mystery

Mushrooms are like sponges for radiations, too.

Ineedaname · 13-09-2018 11:20am

CruelCoin wrote: »

The most searched for term on the Bing search engine has been "Google" for 28 months running.

RIP Bing

Bing has 1/3 of the market share in the US and brings in about $5 billion per year. Obviously it will never compete with Google but it is far from a failure.

On that note 75% of Googles mobile revenue actually comes from iPhone rather than android. They pay Apple $3 billion per year just to make Google their default search engine.

I bet you didnt know that

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