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Strange Science Facts

GuanYin

This thread is for any fact or tid bit from the world of science you feel like sharing, but don't want to start a full thread on.

Please post an accompanying link if you can.

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DessieOH

Small fact on the polar bear...

Polar bears actually have black skin and translucent hairs... black skin for heat absorption and the translucent hair allow this heat to be absorbed yet the hair appears white for purposes of camaflogue

Micky 32

I could never get my head around this about time. As you go near the speed of light time slows down, so you go out in your spaceship on a round trip out in space at the speed of light for a year and when you come back to earth 10 years have passed

. I always thought time was just a measurement of what we do and events. There must be more to time than that.

thebouldwhacker

Micky 32 wrote: »

I could never get my head around this about time. As you go near the speed of light time slows down, so you go out in your spaceship on a round trip out in space at the speed of light for a year and when you come back to earth 10 years have passed. I always thought time was just a measurement of what we do and events. There must be more to time than that.

ya cant just throw out questions about time.... try these clips.:pac:

Ohh the headache is back:(

nyarlothothep

Micky 32 wrote: »

I could never get my head around this about time. As you go near the speed of light time slows down, so you go out in your spaceship on a round trip out in space at the speed of light for a year and when you come back to earth 10 years have passed. I always thought time was just a measurement of what we do and events. There must be more to time than that.

I'm not a scientist but stuff like time dillation makes a lot more sense if you visualize space and time as being one thing rather than separate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minkowski_diagram

orourkeda

The human brain is 2% of the body's weight but uses a hungry 20% of its energy

tricky D

Re time dilation...

Another version of this is about travelling to the nearest star about 4 light years away. Assuming you have a propulsion system that can accelerate you at 10m/s2 (that's your on board gravity sorted), you would set off accelerating for about 15/20 years. When you're half way there, you're up to around half the speed of light. Then you turn the craft around to decelerate at 10m/s2. So if you're lucky enough to find a planet with intelligent life, 30ish years later, you arrive there, say hello, exchange gifts, have a wild party, etc. then you head off back to good old Earth. The round trip would take around 70 years, but when you get back something like 20/30 thousand years have passed!

Can't remember the figures more precisely, but that's the jist of it.

biglittlebill

Not sure if this counts but a tigers skin is striped, as well as its fur

c-note

Submarines cannot use GPS to navigate underwater as the signals from the gps satellites only penetrate water to a very shallow depth.

instead they use inertial guidance, and correct their position occasionally when they surface!

Urizen

This is probably off topic, but look up non-Euclidean geometry. Get your head around that!

Also, multi-dimensional theory is interesting, relates to string theory. This video isn't REALLY right, but damn it's entertaining!

http://tenthdimension.com/medialinks.php

del88

up to a billion for each of us, it has been suggested - probably once belonged to Shakespeare. A billion more each came from Buddha and Genghis Khan and Beethoven, and any other historical figure you care to name. (The personages have to be historical, apparently, as it takes the atoms some decades to become thoroughly redistributed; however much you may wish it, you are not yet one with Elvis Presley

Turtwig

del88 wrote: »

up to a billion for each of us, it has been suggested - probably once belonged to Shakespeare. A billion more each came from Buddha and Genghis Khan and Beethoven, and any other historical figure you care to name. (The personages have to be historical, apparently, as it takes the atoms some decades to become thoroughly redistributed; however much you may wish it, you are not yet one with Elvis Presley

In response to this one.

Each time you drink a glass water at least one molecule of it has passed through the bladder of Oliver Cromwell.

Capt'n Midnight

Malty_T wrote: »

In response to this one.

Each time you drink a glass water at least one molecule of it has passed through the bladder of Oliver Cromwell.

If you live in London it's quite probable that the molecules have been through several baldders since they last fell as rain

Antrim Hotels

keep these comming there are some very interesting facts here

woofy

50% of the suns mass is concentrated in just 2% of its volume at its core with a density of over a hundred tonnes per meter cubed at the center.

Every second the sun produces as much energy as about 6 trillion of the bombs that destroyed hiroshima in WWII.

The energy produced at the core of the Sun in nuclear fusion takes millions of years to travel to the surface of the sun but just a little over 8 minutes to reach the earth from the suns surface.

If you could stand on the surface of the Sun you'd weigh about 28 times heavier than you do on the Earths surface.

The Sun will produce as much energy in its approx. 10 billion year lifetime (in its current state) as the entire universe will in about a micro second.

magicbastarder

Micky 32 wrote: »

I could never get my head around this about time. As you go near the speed of light time slows down, so you go out in your spaceship on a round trip out in space at the speed of light for a year and when you come back to earth 10 years have passed.

by the time you reach the speed of light, time has stopped. so (afaik) time does not pass for a photon; so it 'visits' every location on its path at the same time.

HigsBoson

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/03/icy-hot/

El Siglo

You can still have an erection when you die. A death erection (sometimes referred to as "angel lust") is a post-mortem erection which occurs when a male individual dies vertically or face-down with the cadaver remaining in this position.
Male sea horses can get pregnant. The male seahorse has a brood pouch in which he carries eggs deposited by the female. The mating pair entwine their tails and the female aligns a long tube called an ovipositor with the male's pouch. The eggs move through the tube into the male's pouch where he then fertilizes them. The embryos develop in ten days to six weeks, depending on species and water conditions. When the male gives birth he pumps his tail until the baby seahorses emerge.

Kxiii

The Sun loses about four million tons of mass per second.
If you could remove all of the space inside the atoms of our bodies the human races would fit into a space the size of a sugar cube.

Doom

I once heard that of all the people that have ever lived, more than half are alive now...could that be true

thebouldwhacker

I have always liked this one (though its completely unquantifiable)

"there are more atoms in a glass of water, than there are glasses of water in all the oceans"

catchy isn't it...

thebouldwhacker

Doom wrote: »

I once heard that of all the people that have ever lived, more than half are alive now...could that be true

There are 6.8 (ish) billion people in the world.

Half that is 3.4 billion.

Man has been around for ~200,000 years with a population boom since agriculture was happened across about ~30,000 years ago

you do the math:)

Capt'n Midnight

Doom wrote: »

I once heard that of all the people that have ever lived, more than half are alive now...could that be true

not true

http://www.prb.org/Articles/2002/HowManyPeopleHaveEverLivedonEarth.aspx
total number of humans is about 100 Billion

there are more scientists alive now than have died in the past though

Capt'n Midnight

thebouldwhacker wrote: »

I have always liked this one (though its completely unquantifiable)

"there are more atoms in a glass of water, than there are glasses of water in all the oceans"

catchy isn't it...

easily quantifiable
6.022 * 10^23 molecules per mole * 3 atoms per molecule ( H2O)

a cup is about 1/3 of 568ml and 18g of water = one mole of water

Ocean has a volume of 1.3 Billion Km3

thebouldwhacker

Johnny was a chemist,
Johnny is no more,
what Johnny thought was H2O
was H2SO4

gentillabdulla

Water that freezes as it heats

http://phasing.org/2010/02/16/scientists-freeze-water-with-heat/

invaderjim

You have 10 times more bacteria living in and on your body than your own cells, true story.

Nutgrover

invaderjim wrote: »

You have 10 times more bacteria living in and on your body than your own cells, true story.

Any link to prove it? Thanks.

invaderjim

Nutgrover wrote: »

Any link to prove it? Thanks.

A review paper form 2005, I've included a link but you need to be subscribed to the journal to read it. Most Colleges will have access though.

A dynamic partnership: Celebrating our gut flora. Cynthia L Sears. Anaerobe Volume 11, Issue 5, October 2005, Pages 247-251

http://0-www.sciencedirect.com.library.ucc.ie/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6W9T-4GGWGNP-1&_user=77869&_coverDate=10/31/2005&_alid=1617926061&_rdoc=1&_orig=search&_origin=search&_zone=rslt_list_item&_cdi=6691&_sort=r&_st=13&_docanchor=&view=c&_ct=12&_acct=C000006258&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=77869&searchtype=a&_fmt=full&_pii=S1075996405000685&_issn=10759964&md5=0bf67823a7b019c8e92e4af703a8b71d#SECX2

Nutgrover

I have a student in my family, will check if I can access

. Thanks again. Hard to believe though, isn't it?

Tar.Aldarion

If on one hand you shot a gun along a horizontal path across the ground and in the other dropped a bullet out of your hand, both would hit the ground at the same time.