Science facts that amaze you?

ScumLord · 06-09-2014 4:09pm

Another cool moon fact is that the moon is slowly moving away from earth. In the past it was much closer and in the future it will be further away. The cool thing about this is that humans just so happen to be around for the time when the moon fits perfectly over the sun for the most spectacular type of solar eclipse.

Wibbs · 06-09-2014 4:51pm

Just remembered you can strike flint off iron pyrites to get sparks.

Yea the moon is a cool one alright. If you stood on the earth in the Devonian period 400 million years ago the moon would have been much bigger in the sky and tides would have been much stronger. The days were shorter too and there were more in a year. You'd have also needed oxygen tanks as the air wouldn't have enough in it to breathe. Fast forward to the era of the dinosaurs and there would have been more oxygen in the air than today and it would have been a lot hotter too.

The King of Moo · 06-09-2014 9:00pm

Everything in the universe is basically made of hydrogen, the simplest atom with one electron and one proton. It's fused into more complex molecules by nuclear fusion in stars, and if you kept breaking down any element into a simpler one by nuclear fission and kept repeating the process you'd eventually get down to hydrogen.

It's simple, but I find it beautiful that all the amazing complexity of the universe can be broken down to such a basic substance.

Joe Doe · 06-09-2014 9:23pm

ScumLord wrote: »

Another cool moon fact is that the moon is slowly moving away from earth. In the past it was much closer and in the future it will be further away. The cool thing about this is that humans just so happen to be around for the time when the moon fits perfectly over the sun for the most spectacular type of solar eclipse.

Yep that's part of the recurring math pattern mentioned earlier (between the sun-earth-moon). The Sun is 400 times larger than the Moon and 400 times further away from Earth, which is why we get to see such great eclipses

Also the Golden Section, Divine Proportion, Fibonacci series aka phi (i.e. 1.618), can be seen repeating everywhere from the design of galaxies to tiny seashells, to synthetic designs such as the pyramids of Egypt, logo and product design and it even appears in forex trading patterns! Both conscious intelligence and unconscious instinct has a strong preference for this ratio.

kowloon · 07-09-2014 1:33am

bnt wrote: »

(-1)-(-1)=0

Feck it!

thelad95 · 08-09-2014 12:39am

There's been a lot of trolls and stupid threads on After Hours in recent times but this thread is fantastic.

The Th!ng · 08-09-2014 1:29am

As of 2014 the highest transistor count on a commercially available CPU is over 4 billion. In comparison to this the first transistor, which was developed in Bell Labs in 1947, was roughly 1 inch high and was comprised of, among other things, a paper clip.

Link to replica of the first transistor

Capt'n Midnight · 09-09-2014 1:20am

There are roughly two moles of stars in the observable universe.

Panthro wrote: »

More Mantis Shrimp

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/mantis_shrimp

snowstorm445 wrote: »

Speaking of science facts, Cork is scientifically proven to be the centre of the Universe.

Just like everywhere else

Karl Stein · 09-09-2014 1:27am

thelad95 wrote: »

There's been a lot of trolls and stupid threads on After Hours in recent times but this thread is fantastic.

Well.. seeing as God made all this stuff the whole 'OMG science' thing is a bit of trolling by people who should know better.

sbsquarepants · 09-09-2014 10:47am

Jakey Rolling wrote: »

The gravitational pull of the Sun on the Earth is about 175 times that of the Moon, yet the Moon is the main cause of the ocean tides.

The gravitational pull of the sun on the oceans is roughly 50% that of the moon afaik. I'm open to correction on the exact number but it's definitely less, not more and certainly not 175 times more. Every time you double the distance between 2 objects, you quarter the gravitational attraction (the inverse square rule - g is proportional to 1/distance squared)

Maximus Alexander · 09-09-2014 10:55am

sbsquarepants wrote: »

The gravitational pull of the sun on the oceans is roughly 50% that of the moon afaik. I'm open to correction on the exact number but it's definitely less, not more and certainly not 175 times more. Every time you double the distance between 2 objects, you quarter the gravitational attraction (the inverse square rule - g is proportional to 1/distance squared)

The force exerted on the Earth by the Sun's gravity is indeed 175 times that of the moon. However, the difference in the effect of the Sun's gravitational field across the Earth is negligible, because the Earth's size is so tiny compared to the Sun's distance.

The difference in the Moon's gravitational field across the Earth's surface is greater, because Earth's size is much bigger as a fraction of the distance to the moon. So, the Moon's gravity has a greater effect on the parts of the Earth that are closer to it than those that are off to the sides, raising tides.

Egginacup · 09-09-2014 7:50pm

thelad95 wrote: »

The population of County Leitrim would not fill Croke Park. Science bitches!!!!!

The entire population of ants in the world is heavier than the entire population of humans.

And to add to that, to illustrate how many insect there are on the planet, 99% of all living creatures can fly.

Egginacup · 09-09-2014 7:52pm

glass is not actually a solid but a super slow moving liquid.

The Dagda · 09-09-2014 7:59pm

Egginacup wrote: »

glass is not actually a solid but a super slow moving liquid.

Myth.

Gazzmonkey · 09-09-2014 8:15pm

The Dagda wrote: »

Myth.

Look at the glass panes in extremely old buildings, the bottom of every surviving pane is thicker than than the top.

The glass flowed downward slightly due to gravity.

Maximus Alexander · 09-09-2014 9:06pm

Gazzmonkey wrote: »

Look at the glass panes in extremely old buildings, the bottom of every surviving pane is thicker than than the top.

The glass flowed downward slightly due to gravity.

Look at the moon. It's an oblate spheroid, wider at the along the equator than between the poles due to its rotation. It's not a liquid though.

Also, the glass is thicker at the bottom in old buildings because they used to be really bad at making glass.

gerard_65 · 09-09-2014 9:12pm

The sun is white not yellow.
There is no dark side of the moon.

Maximus Alexander · 09-09-2014 9:15pm

gerard_65 wrote: »

There is no dark side of the moon.

Uhh... Yes there is. :eek:

MonkieSocks · 09-09-2014 9:17pm

gerard_65 wrote: »

There is no dark side of the moon.

Thats gonna keep me awake all night now.....thanks :mad:

bnt · 09-09-2014 9:35pm

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

Uhh... Yes there is. :eek:

There is always a dark side at any given time, but it's not always the side known as "the Dark Side of the Moon". Sometimes the "Dark Side" gets all the light. :P

GLaDOS · 09-09-2014 9:37pm

gerard_65 wrote: »

There is no dark side of the moon.

As a matter of fact it's all dark

Maximus Alexander · 09-09-2014 9:40pm

bnt wrote: »

There is always a dark side at any given time, but it's not always the side known as "the Dark Side of the Moon". Sometimes the "Dark Side" gets all the light. :P

Yeah I don't follow... The side that faces away from the sun at any given time is dark. Is it a thing that people think this is not the case?? You can literally see it during any phase of the moon apart from when it's full.

Capt'n Midnight · 09-09-2014 9:44pm

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

Uhh... Yes there is. :eek:

"there is no dark side in the moon, really. As a matter of fact it's all dark"
Gerry O'Driscoll

The albedo of the Moon is around 0.12 , so it's nearly as dark as coal.

srsly78 · 09-09-2014 9:44pm

Gazzmonkey wrote: »

Look at the glass panes in extremely old buildings, the bottom of every surviving pane is thicker than than the top.

The glass flowed downward slightly due to gravity.

As you were told already, it's a myth. Google it.

Some old windows are thicker at the bottom because of the manufacturing process. It does flow when molten, like many other solids. Those old windows were like that when they were brand new.

catallus · 09-09-2014 9:51pm

God damn it.

Technically glass does "flow" but it flows at about 1mm per 1 million years. It has nothing to do with the shape of old panes of glass, which is, as has been pointed out, due to the processes used to make panes in the past.

The "dark side of the moon" isn't actually dark, it gets plenty of light. But the phrase "dark side of the moon" refers to that side of the moon which always faces away from the earth; this effect is called tidal locking and is a property of satellites which rotate around each other.

Maximus Alexander · 09-09-2014 9:54pm

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

"there is no dark side in the moon, really. As a matter of fact it's all dark"
Gerry O'Driscoll

The albedo of the Moon is around 0.12 , so it's nearly as dark as coal.

The albedo of a rainforest is 0.07 - 0.15. I wouldn't call them "as dark as coal" though.

sbsquarepants · 10-09-2014 9:24am

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

"there is no dark side in the moon, really. As a matter of fact it's all dark"
Gerry O'Driscoll

The albedo of the Moon is around 0.12 , so it's nearly as dark as coal.

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

The albedo of a rainforest is 0.07 - 0.15. I wouldn't call them "as dark as coal" though.

Today, I have learned a new word!

I'm not quite sure I understand it though. At the risk of sounding like an idiot - if albedo means overall reflectiveness (usually of a specific frequency but in these cases averaged across the visible spectrum) I'm figuring the rainforest is so low because it's basically absorbing all frequencies bar green, but I don't understand how the moon is so low when it appears so bright, light grey at least, touching on off white sometimes, surely to appear white you must reflect all frequencies? Fresh snow has an albedo of .9 for example. I'm puzzled.
I always looked on it as perfectly white = reflects everything, perfectly black = reflects nothing and shades of grey are in between, the closer to white or black the grey is the more or less frequencies reflected. But now I have my doubts, does a particular shade of grey equate to a specific frequency? This albedo lark would seem to suggest it does.

Maximus Alexander · 10-09-2014 9:35am

sbsquarepants wrote: »

Today, I have learned a new word!

I'm not quite sure I understand it though. At the risk of sounding like an idiot - if albedo means overall reflectiveness (usually of a specific frequency but in these cases averaged across the visible spectrum) I'm figuring the rainforest is so low because it's basically absorbing all frequencies bar green, but I don't understand how the moon is so low when it appears so bright, light grey at least, touching on off white sometimes, surely to appear white you must reflect all frequencies? Fresh snow has an albedo of .9 for example. I'm puzzled.
I always looked on it as perfectly white = reflects everything, perfectly black = reflects nothing and shades of grey are in between, the closer to white or black the grey is the more or less frequencies reflected. But now I have my doubts.

Albedo is a complicated thing, in fact there is more than one type of albedo that will give different values for the same object. Some objects are highly directional and things like shadow hiding will also have an effect. There are also things like opposition surge which increase brightness when the light source is behind the observer.

Interestingly, rainforests actually do appear black (or very dark at least) from orbit because, as you say, they absorb so much light and reflect so little.

Different parts of the surface of the moon have wildly different albedo, but it averages out at about 0.12. The Earth is in around 0.3 if I remember correctly.

Capt'n Midnight · 10-09-2014 9:42am

Also you have to remember that reflection is not like a mirror, the reflected light is dispersed in all directions.

Brightest sunlight is 120,000 lux
Full moon on a clear night is 0.25 lux

Moonlight from a quarter moon at 0.01 lux is 12 million times darker than the sun

sbsquarepants · 10-09-2014 10:05am

Thanks folks. That's a bit clearer now. My grasp is still a little shaky mind, but i'll read up on it a bit when I get a chance, I'd never heard the word before today.
Every day is a school day!:)

Maximus Alexander · 10-09-2014 10:14am

sbsquarepants wrote: »

but I don't understand how the moon is so low when it appears so bright, light grey at least, touching on off white sometimes, surely to appear white you must reflect all frequencies? Fresh snow has an albedo of .9 for example. I'm puzzled.

In thinking about this further, I suspect the moon appears so bright and white to us because of the way our eye (or brain) works. As in it looks super bright because it's against a dark, black backdrop. I suspect if you could put Enceladus in orbit and look at it and the moon side-by-side, the moon would look like a dark grey by comparison. This is just guesswork on my part though.

allibastor · 10-09-2014 10:20am

Science facts that amaze me.

That all information available to us shows that if we make computers which are smarter than us and can think for themselves they will see us a threat/consumer of resources. Any technology which unnaturally prolongs life yet doesn't add to the natural resources available.

All other advances which will limit the human potential for growth and will outdate what we can do.

Yet science still moves towards this as a goal.
Not a terminator rant, but there is no other species on the planet which has such over population and consumes as much as humans, save for a virus.

sbsquarepants · 10-09-2014 10:26am

allibastor wrote: »

Yet science still moves towards this as a goal.
Not a terminator rant, but there is no other species on the planet which has such over population and consumes as much as humans, save for a virus.

Slightly off topic but this is not really true.
What we have is a distribution problem caused by greed, hatred and apathy. Half the world is obese, the other half is starving - we have all the resources we need for ourselves and probably for billions of others - we are just a species of assholes generally speaking. We have all these lofty ideals about fraternity and social responsibility that we just point blank fail to live up to. We are a lot more selfish and individualistic than our sanctimonious bullshít would have you believe.

endacl · 10-09-2014 10:28am

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

In thinking about this further, I suspect the moon appears so bright and white to us because of the way our eye (or brain) works. As in it looks super bright because it's against a dark, black backdrop. I suspect if you could put Enceladus in orbit and look at it and the moon side-by-side, the moon would look like a dark grey by comparison. This is just guesswork on my part though.

The darkest object in the solar system is the sun.

sbsquarepants · 10-09-2014 10:30am

endacl wrote: »

The darkest object in the solar system is the sun.

The newspaper?

How the hell could the sun, that big bright fussion reactor you can see and feel from millions of miles away be darker than the earth for example?

endacl · 10-09-2014 10:36am

sbsquarepants wrote: »

The newspaper?

How the hell could the sun, that big bright fussion reactor you can see and feel from millions of miles away be darker than the earth for example?

Linkydink

srsly78 · 10-09-2014 10:36am

Probably some lame definition of the term dark, because the sun absorbs all the light that hits it - rather than reflecting it. Thus it may be the darkest, but it's also the most luminous, go figure.

Capt'n Midnight · 10-09-2014 10:41am

allibastor wrote: »

Science facts that amaze me.

That all information available to us shows that if we make computers which are smarter than us and can think for themselves they will see us a threat/consumer of resources. Any technology which unnaturally prolongs life yet doesn't add to the natural resources available.

Then again our civilisation is powered by a tiny fraction of a quarter of a billionth of the Suns light

Lots of room for expansion to the asteroids and the Oort cloud

the area of large asteroids is fairly small
https://xkcd.com/1389/
but you could use them to make space stations and stuff with far larger areas.

also most of the platinum group metals on earth came from Asteroids
and comets are full of stuff for life like water and carbon and nitrogen

also exoplanets https://xkcd.com/1298/ https://xkcd.com/1071/

endacl · 10-09-2014 10:41am

srsly78 wrote: »

Probably some lame definition of the term dark, because the sun absorbs all the light that hits it - rather than reflecting it. Thus it may be the darkest, but it's also the most luminous, go figure.

Not really. More a play on our limited perception of 'bright'. In the grand scheme of things...

allibastor · 10-09-2014 10:41am

sbsquarepants wrote: »

Slightly off topic but this is not really true.
What we have is a distribution problem caused by greed, hatred and apathy. Half the world is obese, the other half is starving - we have all the resources we need for ourselves and probably for billions of others - we are just a species of assholes generally speaking. We have all these lofty ideals about fraternity and social responsibility that we just point blank fail to live up to. We are a lot more selfish and individualistic than our sanctimonious bullshít would have you believe.

August 19 is Earth Overshoot Day 2014, marking the date when humanity has exhausted nature’s budget for the year. For the rest of the year, we will maintain our ecological deficit by drawing down local resource stocks and accumulating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We will be operating in overshoot.
Just as a bank statement tracks income against expenditures, Global Footprint Network measures humanity’s demand for and supply of natural resources and ecological services. And the data is sobering. Global Footprint Network estimates that approximately every eight months, we demand more renewable resources and C02 sequestration than what the planet can provide for an entire year.

No, that means in terms of food. And yes, people are assholes.

The science fact that amazes me is that people can see an answer in front of them but still not understand it

srsly78 · 10-09-2014 10:43am

It's all just a global version of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

sbsquarepants · 10-09-2014 10:43am

endacl wrote: »

Linkydink

I'm going to require an explanation for this one too I think. That doesn't mention the word dark once?

In fact it's mostly concerned with the amount of light that the sun emits. That would be the opposite of dark in my book.

endacl · 10-09-2014 10:43am

allibastor wrote: »

The science fact that amazes me is that people can see an answer in front of them but still not understand it

I agree. The skinny people should eat the fat people.

Rhys Essien · 10-09-2014 11:00am

The mass of a Neutron star would be equivalent to the entire human population squashed down to the size of a sugar cube,or one teaspoon would have 900 times the mass of the Great Pyramid of Giza,or like squeezing 50 million elephants into a timble.

If you were standing on a Neutron star and layed down a sheet of paper,the effort required to climb the edge of the paper would be the equivalent to climbing a 3000 mile cliff on Earth.

Egginacup · 10-09-2014 11:47am

The Dagda wrote: »

Myth.

Well according to Scientific American it's an amorphous solid meaning it's neither liquid nor solid but somewhere in between:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-fiction-glass-liquid/

Solids are highly organized structures. They include crystals, like sugar and salt, with their millions of atoms lined up in a row, explains Mark Ediger, a chemistry professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. "Liquids and glasses don't have that order," he notes. Glasses, though more organized than liquids, do not attain the rigid order of crystals. "Amorphous means it doesn't have that long-range order," Ediger says. With a "solid—if you grab it, it holds its shape," he adds.
When glass is made, the material (often containing silica) is quickly cooled from its liquid state but does not solidify when its temperature drops below its melting point. At this stage, the material is a supercooled liquid, an intermediate state between liquid and glass. To become an amorphous solid, the material is cooled further, below the glass-transition temperature. Past this point, the molecular movement of the material's atoms has slowed to nearly a stop and the material is now a glass. This new structure is not as organized as a crystal, because it did not freeze, but it is more organized than a liquid. For practical purposes, such as holding a drink, glass is like a solid, Ediger says, although a disorganized one.
Like liquids, these disorganized solids can flow, albeit very slowly. Over long periods of time, the molecules making up the glass shift themselves to settle into a more stable, crystallike formation, explains Ediger. The closer the glass is to its glass-transition temperature, the more it shifts; the further away from that changeover point, the slower its molecules move and the more solid it seems.

But the old windows sagging or bulging appearance has nothing to do with this characteristic of glass as a fluid. That's the myth, but that glass is a liquid is actually a fact.

BeerWolf · 10-09-2014 12:58pm

Fate Amenable To Change wrote: »

The Greeks knew the world was round and one of them even got a rough estimate for the size of its circumference
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes

Romans / Greeks back in their day seemed far more advanced than people of Medieval times before the renaissance... go figure. :pac:

Beano · 10-09-2014 1:07pm

endacl wrote: »

I agree. The skinny people should eat the fat people.

or let the fat people eat the skinny people. End result is the same. no more skinny people.

The Dagda · 10-09-2014 1:48pm

Egginacup wrote: »

but that glass is a liquid is actually a fact.

Did you even read your own link? Because it clearly says;

Glass, however, is actually neither a liquid—supercooled or otherwise—nor a solid

Glass is NOT a liquid.

Maximus Alexander · 10-09-2014 2:00pm

endacl wrote: »

The darkest object in the solar system is the sun.

Least reflective != darkest. Pretty obvious really if you take a quick look at the sun. :P

ScumLord · 10-09-2014 2:03pm

allibastor wrote: »

That all information available to us shows that if we make computers which are smarter than us and can think for themselves they will see us a threat/consumer of resources. Any technology which unnaturally prolongs life yet doesn't add to the natural resources available.

This is like AI racism against a creature that doesn't even exist yet. Why would self aware AI see humans as bad. If it was to put us into context against every other animal on the planet it would be more likely to see life as a whole as bad, because all our perceived bad points are just things that all living creatures form humans to bacteria do. Nature is cruel, it's survival of the fittest, kill or be killed. Mother nature would look down on us with pride and wonder why we haven't killed off all the inferior life yet. The fact is humans are the nicest animal the plant has ever seen.

Science facts that amaze you?

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