Science facts that amaze you?

steddyeddy · 04-09-2014 7:59pm #1

Anyone got any facts about how the world works? Here's one of my favourite:

The honey bee, apis mellifera is one of the most interesting animals. A colony of honey bees can contain tens of thousands of bees. Amongst the bees are workers (females), a few males and a queen. The queen can live up to twenty times longer than the workers, she has no sting, no wax gland or no pollen baskets. She is near to double the size of a worker bee. Worker bees live for weeks yet the queen lives fo years. The interesting thing is she is genetically identical to thousands of her sisters since birth yet develops completely differently to them.

The queen might mate with several males and as a result not all bees will be genetically identical to each other but the hive will contain tens of thousands of genetical identical bees. All of these genetically identical larvae will be fed royal jelly from the nurse bees up to their third day of life. Then something mysterious happens, for some reason as of yet unknown to scientists, the nurse bees select some of the larvae (for reasons as yet unknown) which are indentical to their sisters and continue to feed them royal jelly after the third day. The rest of the larvae are fed pollen and nectar and develop into worker bees. The larvae fed on royal jelly develop into queen bees.

Only recently has the mechanisim behind this been elucidated. Royal jelly is a strange highly nutritious substance containing amino acids, strange fats and some as of yet uknown substances. This substance causes methylation of the bee's DNA (the addition of a carbon and three hydrogens to one of the DNA bases) this causes some of the genes to shut off and other genes to turn off. Hence one substance causes a complete change in the phenotype (the genotype is the actual list genes contained in the organism but the phenotype is the expression of those genes) of that animal.

snubbleste · 04-09-2014 8:01pm

steddyeddy · 04-09-2014 8:02pm

snubbleste wrote: »

Really?

KrustyBurger · 04-09-2014 8:05pm

This is one of the fastest reactions in the animal kingdom. The ninja shrimp can punch at a speed of 50 mph...in the water! This is as fast as a bullet leaving a gun. It has the same bite force as a shark.

On top of that it gets it's name from its ability to change colour to suit its environment.

One crazy crustacean.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=182rEUUw7Vo

Holsten · 04-09-2014 8:05pm

The majority of them amaze me.

Generally though the facts/ideas/theories about space blow my mind.

KrustyBurger · 04-09-2014 8:06pm

Holsten wrote: »

The majority of them amaze me.

Generally though the facts/ideas/theories about space blow my mind.

Yep they're out of this world.

Betty Bloggs · 04-09-2014 8:07pm

There can be more bacteria in just your mouth alone, than the number of people living on planet earth.

Rasheed · 04-09-2014 8:08pm

Thanks OP, that's really interesting.

My cousin told me this from school, that Humans share 50% of our DNA with a banana.

Don't know how true it is but always thought it was cool!

Tokyo · 04-09-2014 8:09pm

The Amazing World of Nature

Hippos, originally from northern Russia, must be sheared regularly to survive in the hot climate of Africa.

KrustyBurger · 04-09-2014 8:09pm

90% of the cells in your body are bacteria (but they're so small they don't take up much space). Raises the question are you 90% microbe?

jamo2oo9 · 04-09-2014 8:09pm

When a bee climaxes during sex, his testicles explode. Then he dies.

recylingbin · 04-09-2014 8:11pm

Rasheed wrote: »

Thanks OP, that's really interesting.

My cousin told me this from school, that Humans share 50% of our DNA with a banana.

Don't know how true it is but always thought it was cool!

Conversely, jellyfish share none of theirs with actual jelly, as i found out to my cost.

The_Valeyard · 04-09-2014 8:12pm

Black holes

Sheer awesome space terror

dodderangler · 04-09-2014 8:13pm

Some animals if in an environment were one sex is dominant will often change sex to even the numbers out.

Duggy747 · 04-09-2014 8:13pm

Ducks have corkscrew willies and like to dish out a bit of the old rape when mating.

Irish Guitarist · 04-09-2014 8:14pm

Button beetles are fascinating.

When a flying unfertilized female reaches a target such as a date stone, sweet almond, betel nut, nutmeg, cinnamon bark[3] or a button made from vegetable ivory, hence the name "button beetle"), she bores a hole in it and excavates a chamber. (Males cannot penetrate the stone.[2]) Inside, she produces a brood of four or five males. She mates with the first son that reaches maturity, then proceeds to eat them all. She then enlarges the chamber and lays a brood of about 70 offspring. Some of the females mate with their brothers.

I'm sure I also heard that some button beetle males are born without eyes because they're not going to be around long enough to need them.

catallus · 04-09-2014 8:16pm

The_Valeyard wrote: »

Black holes

Sheer awesome space terror

They're not real though. They're mathematical constructs to explain the shape of the universe, aren't they?

steddyeddy · 04-09-2014 8:18pm

Enzymes are protein catalysts. That means they are proteins that speed up the rate of a reaction. An enzyme carbonic anhydrase operates in your blood stream to prevent CO2 in your blood turning to carbonic acid. It converts CO2 to water and bicarbonate and it does this 1 million times a second. That amazes me.

Tokyo · 04-09-2014 8:19pm

The Amazing World of Nature

Male dinosaurs, when isolated on a tropical island, have been known to spontaneously change sex from male to female in that single sex environment.

recylingbin · 04-09-2014 8:22pm

The_Valeyard wrote: »

Black holes

Sheer awesome space terror

Stop going to strip clubs if they scare you.

The_Valeyard · 04-09-2014 8:34pm

catallus wrote: »

They're not real though. They're mathematical constructs to explain the shape of the universe, aren't they?

Debatable. Hawkings has been wrong before. But they certainly are not the giant vacuum cleaners that Hollywood has made them out to be.

ToddyDoody · 04-09-2014 8:38pm

A full stop contains millions of atoms, which is comprised predominantly of electrons orbiting a tiny solid nucleus

endacl · 04-09-2014 8:45pm

There are more humans alive at present than have lived in the past since Homo sapiens emerged as a distinct species. We'll be grand if there's a zombie apocalypse. We outnumber the dead!

Jupiter alone comprises twice the mass of the rest of the solar system combined. Excluding the sun of course.

Of course, if there was only the sun, the solar system would still have lost less than 1% of its total mass.

somuj · 04-09-2014 8:46pm

Human feaces tastes like ****.

Dave0301 · 04-09-2014 8:47pm

ToddyDoody wrote: »

A full stop contains millions of atoms, which is comprised predominantly of electrons orbiting a tiny solid nucleus

And on the other side of the scale...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEheh1BH34Q

Scale of the Universe 2 is something everyone should have a go on.

mackeire · 04-09-2014 8:49pm

steddyeddy wrote: »

Anyone got any facts about how the world works? Here's one of my favourite:

The honey bee, apis mellifera is one of the most interesting animals. A colony of honey bees can contain tens of thousands of bees. Amongst the bees are workers (females), a few males and a queen. The queen can live up to twenty times longer than the workers, she has no sting, no wax gland or no pollen baskets. She is near to double the size of a worker bee. Worker bees live for weeks yet the queen lives fo years. The interesting thing is she is genetically identical to thousands of her sisters since birth yet develops completely differently to them.

The queen might mate with several males and as a result not all bees will be genetically identical to each other but the hive will contain tens of thousands of genetical identical bees. All of these genetically identical larvae will be fed royal jelly from the nurse bees up to their third day of life. Then something mysterious happens, for some reason as of yet unknown to scientists, the nurse bees select some of the larvae (for reasons as yet unknown) which are indentical to their sisters and continue to feed them royal jelly after the third day. The rest of the larvae are fed pollen and nectar and develop into worker bees. The larvae fed on royal jelly develop into queen bees.

Only recently has the mechanisim behind this been elucidated. Royal jelly is a strange highly nutritious substance containing amino acids, strange fats and some as of yet uknown substances. This substance causes methylation of the bee's DNA (the addition of a carbon and three hydrogens to one of the DNA bases) this causes some of the genes to shut off and other genes to turn off. Hence one substance causes a complete change in the phenotype (the genotype is the actual list genes contained in the organism but the phenotype is the expression of those genes) of that animal.

Honey Bees share out jobs based on their age. For instance, worker bees that are 1-2 days old spend their time cleaning cells, starting with the one they were born in, as well as keeping the brood warm; from 3-5 days old, they feed older larvae; from 6-11 days old, they feed the youngest larvae; from 12-17 days old, they produce wax, build combs, carry food, and perform undertaker duties; from 18-21 days old, they get guard duty, protecting the hive entrance; from 22 days on until their death at around 40-45 days, they get to fly from the hive collecting pollen, nectar, water, pollinating plants, and things of this nature.

mackeire · 04-09-2014 8:51pm

The word “potato” comes from the Haitian word “batata”, which was their name for a sweet potato. This later came to Spanish as “patata” and eventually into English as “potato”.

mackeire · 04-09-2014 8:55pm

Ever wondered how the deaf wake themselves up in the morning? Well, there are many different ways, none being quite as fool proof as a blaring loud noise is among the hearing. The most foolproof method, outside of someone just coming to wake you up, is a very strong vibrating accessory attached to a special alarm clock. The attachment is then generally placed under the pillow or on the bed near the person. Another common method is an alarm clock that has a bright light attached that points at the sleeper. When the alarm goes off, it flashes brightly on and off. Due to the fact that the majority of deaf people are very heavy sleepers, as you might expect, this method doesn’t work as well as you might think. Yet another method is programming a house or room heater to heat the room to high temperatures around the time the person needs to get up. This, again, isn’t the best method for heavy sleepers and can result in the other downside of sweaty blankets and sheets :eek:

srsly78 · 04-09-2014 9:04pm

catallus wrote: »

They're not real though. They're mathematical constructs to explain the shape of the universe, aren't they?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3qSr5HmGkI

What do you think after looking at that? We can't see what is in the middle of our galaxy, but we can see how it perturbs the motion of stuff nearby.

Maybe you are referring to dark matter instead? This is indeed a hypothetical thing to explain the shape of our universe (missing mass that we can't see).

somuj · 04-09-2014 9:06pm

srsly78 wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3qSr5HmGkI

What do you think after looking at that? We can't see what is in the middle of our galaxy, but we can see how it perturbs the motion of stuff nearby.

Maybe you are referring to dark matter instead? This is indeed a hypothetical thing to explain the shape of our universe (missing mass that we can't see).

Dark matter planet.

Macavity. · 04-09-2014 9:07pm

A person can survive without drinking anything for the rest of their life.

srsly78 · 04-09-2014 9:07pm

Macavity. wrote: »

A person can survive without drinking anything for the rest of their life.

Because food has lots of water in it.

endacl · 04-09-2014 9:08pm

srsly78 wrote: »

Because food has lots of water in it.

Read it again.

somuj · 04-09-2014 9:09pm

srsly78 wrote: »

Because food has lots of water in it.

A person can survive without eating, drinking or breathing for the rest of their life. Its just that their life is gonna be very short.

srsly78 · 04-09-2014 9:10pm

Well if we are going to be silly and pedantic you could just use an IV drip for the rest of your life too.

endacl · 04-09-2014 9:11pm

In game hours, humans have spent more time playing World of Warcraft than they have existed as a distinct species. That's a total of almost six million years sitting in the dark, pretending to be an elf.

:eek:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/869177-WoW-s-total-played-is-5-93-million-years

House of Blaze · 04-09-2014 9:25pm

endacl wrote: »

In game hours, humans have spent more time playing World of Warcraft than they have existed as a distinct species. That's a total of almost six million years sitting in the dark, pretending to be an elf.

:eek:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/869177-WoW-s-total-played-is-5-93-million-years

So....

http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/000/273/548/de2.jpg

unfortunately · 04-09-2014 10:20pm

endacl wrote: »

There are more humans alive at present than have lived in the past since Homo sapiens emerged as a distinct species. We'll be grand if there's a zombie apocalypse. We outnumber the dead!

Jupiter alone comprises twice the mass of the rest of the solar system combined. Excluding the sun of course.

Of course, if there was only the sun, the solar system would still have lost less than 1% of its total mass.

The "most-humans-in-history-are-alive-now" thing is a myth - it is estimated that there have been around 100 billion throughout history. Reading that paragraph fro Wikipedia, it is estimated that 40% of humans did not survive beyond their first birthday.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Number_of_humans_who_have_ever_lived

The world's population is predicted to rise to maybe around 9 billion then decline, so the peak of human population could probably be within some of our lifetimes. Assuming we don't start colonising the solar system.

An interesting animal is the Venus' Flower Basket. It's a sponge made from silica so it's like glass. It has a symbiotic relationship with a shrimp - it traps a male and female who live their lives out inside the sponge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus'_Flower_Basket

steddyeddy · 04-09-2014 10:33pm

I'm interested in an area of biology/chemistry/physics called quantum biology. It involves the study of quantum mechanical effects within biological symptoms. Anyway it turns out conciousness might have a basis in quantum mechanics.

Discovery of quantum vibrations in microtubules inside brain neurons corroborates controversial 20-year-old theory of consciousness

January 16, 2014

[+]Structure of a microtubule. The ring shape depicts a microtubule in cross-section, showing the 13 protofilaments surrounding a hollow center. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

A review and update of a controversial 20-year-old theory of consciousness published in Elsevier’s Physics of Life Reviews (open access) claims that consciousness derives from deeper-level, finer-scale activities inside brain neurons.
The recent discovery of quantum vibrations in microtubules inside brain neurons corroborates this theory, according to review authors Stuart Hameroff and Sir Roger Penrose. They suggest that EEG rhythms (brain waves) also derive from deeper level microtubule vibrations, and that from a practical standpoint, treating brain microtubule vibrations could benefit a host of mental, neurological, and cognitive conditions.
Microtubules are major components of the structural skeleton of cells.
The theory, called “orchestrated objective reduction” (“Orch OR”), was first put forward in the mid-1990s by eminent mathematical physicist Sir Roger Penrose, FRS, Mathematical Institute and Wadham College, University of Oxford, and prominent anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff, MD, Anesthesiology, Psychology and Center for Consciousness Studies, The University of Arizona, Tucson.

strobe · 04-09-2014 10:38pm

Duggy747 wrote: »

Ducks have corkscrew willies and like to dish out a bit of the old rape when mating.

The Mallard duck is the only animal ever to have been observed engaging in homosexual necrophiliac rape.

bnt · 04-09-2014 10:39pm

Apart from a few exceptions still using the vacuum tube exclusively, every electronic device in existence uses materials called semiconductors in different arrangements. Take pure silicon or germanium, melt it and mix in carefully-controlled amounts of impurities such as gallium arsenide, and you have semiconductors. Let's take two examples, and call them P- and N-type semiconductors.

One of them is pretty useless on its own, but bond two different types of them together (NP), and you have a diode, which passes current in one direction but not the other. Three of them, bonded in a NPN or PNP arrangement, gives you a device that allows one current to open a "gate" to let another current through, again in one direction. We call this a transistor.

There are other, more complex, arrangements for specialised jobs, but the diode and transistor are the basis of nearly all electronics, including the integrated circuits in your computers, the communication equipment that links you to the Internet, and the infrastructure that holds the Internet together.

And to think that the team behind the first working Transistor was led by a man, William Shockley, who was frankly a nutter. Eugenicist, paranoid & delusional, he alienated his co-workers and family alike. Seriously egotistic before he was awarded a Nobel Prize, intolerable afterwards, his written work laid out the whole theory behind the transistor, and showed that it wasn't a lucky break but the result of serious study and experimentation. Many who worked for him got fed up, left to form their own companies in protest, and basically founded Silicon Valley. :cool:

steddyeddy · 04-09-2014 10:39pm

strobe wrote: »

The Mallard duck is the only animal ever to have been observed engaging in homosexual necrophiliac rape.

What about humans :P

catallus · 04-09-2014 10:40pm

strobe wrote: »

The Mallard duck is the only animal ever to have been observed engaging in homosexual necrophiliac rape.

Surely you mean the only one silly enough to get observed doing it!

strobe · 04-09-2014 10:40pm

steddyeddy wrote: »

What about humans :P

No observed instances as far as I am aware (open to correction of course), always been a private affair.

strobe · 04-09-2014 10:42pm

catallus wrote: »

Surely you mean the only one silly enough to get observed doing it!

I thought that was implied.

<<
>>

<<

castletownman · 04-09-2014 10:42pm

Hands up who wants to go on a QI binge

steddyeddy · 04-09-2014 10:43pm

bnt wrote: »

Apart from a few exceptions still using the vacuum tube exclusively, every electronic device in existence uses materials called semiconductors in different arrangements. Take pure silicon or germanium, melt it and mix in carefully-controlled amounts of impurities such as gallium arsenide, and you have semiconductors. Let's take two examples, and call them P- and N-type semiconductors.

One of them is pretty useless on its own, but bond two different types of them together (NP), and you have a diode, which passes current in one direction but not the other. Three of them, bonded in a NPN or PNP arrangement, gives you a device that allows one current to open a "gate" to let another current through, again in one direction. We call this a transistor.

There are other, more complex, arrangements for specialised jobs, but the diode and transistor are the basis of nearly all electronics, including the integrated circuits in your computers, the communication equipment that links you to the Internet, and the infrastructure that holds the Internet together.

And to think that the team behind the first working Transistor was led by a man, William Shockley, who was frankly a nutter. Eugenicist, paranoid & delusional, he alienated his co-workers and family alike. Seriously egotistic before he was awarded a Nobel Prize, intolerable afterwards, his written work laid out the whole theory behind the transistor, and showed that it wasn't a lucky break but the result of serious study and experimentation. Many who worked for him got fed up, left to form their own companies in protest, and basically founded Silicon Valley. :cool:

Very interesting. May look him up now. He sounds like James Watson of DNA fame IMO. Racist, eugenicist, homophobe and woman hater except he gets far too mcuh credit for the discovery of DNA's double helix.

Fate Amenable To Change · 04-09-2014 10:46pm

bnt wrote: »

Apart from a few exceptions still using the vacuum tube exclusively, every electronic device in existence uses materials called semiconductors in different arrangements. Take pure silicon or germanium, melt it and mix in carefully-controlled amounts of impurities such as gallium arsenide, and you have semiconductors. Let's take two examples, and call them P- and N-type semiconductors.

One of them is pretty useless on its own, but bond two different types of them together (NP), and you have a diode, which passes current in one direction but not the other. Three of them, bonded in a NPN or PNP arrangement, gives you a device that allows one current to open a "gate" to let another current through, again in one direction. We call this a transistor.

There are other, more complex, arrangements for specialised jobs, but the diode and transistor are the basis of nearly all electronics, including the integrated circuits in your computers, the communication equipment that links you to the Internet, and the infrastructure that holds the Internet together.

And to think that the team behind the first working Transistor was led by a man, William Shockley, who was frankly a nutter. Eugenicist, paranoid & delusional, he alienated his co-workers and family alike. Seriously egotistic before he was awarded a Nobel Prize, intolerable afterwards, his written work laid out the whole theory behind the transistor, and showed that it wasn't a lucky break but the result of serious study and experimentation. Many who worked for him got fed up, left to form their own companies in protest, and basically founded Silicon Valley. :cool:

Wow you just gave an overview of the npn that no teacher/lecturer has ever given me without going on for about an hour about irrelevant rubbish.

GLaDOS · 04-09-2014 10:51pm

strobe wrote: »

The Mallard duck is the only animal ever to have been observed engaging in homosexual necrophiliac rape.

[citation needed]

The Dagda · 04-09-2014 10:51pm

A child's got more bones than a grown up's got!

steddyeddy · 04-09-2014 10:52pm

The Dagda wrote: »

A child's got more bones than a grown up's got!

And that's a natural law

Science facts that amaze you?

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