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Strange Science Facts

  • 12-10-2003 11:02pm
    #1
    Closed Accounts Posts: 15,552 ✭✭✭✭


    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.


«13

Comments

  • Closed Accounts Posts: 15,552 ✭✭✭✭GuanYin


    Sykeirl's Happy Science Fact of the Week #1:
    Even correct condom use is ineffective against 40% of STIs you may encounter - If you are sexually active have regular STI screenings.

    read more here


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 15,552 ✭✭✭✭GuanYin


    Sykeirl's Happy Science Fact of the Week #2:
    99% of all creatures that have ever existed on earth are now extinct.

    read/discuss more here


  • Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 90,508 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    99% of all TYPES OFcreatures that have ever existed on earth are now extinct.

    Actually it is much worse that that - between 94-95% of all species went extinct at the end of the Permian.

    In comparison most species, apart of course from large reptiles, surviced the KT extinction that killed Dinosaurs, (and even then large like Crocs and Turtles surviced)

    So few species survived the permian extinction that the fossil record from parts of South Africia, Antartica, Siberia and India consist almost entirely of the species Lystrosaurus a mammal-like reptile.
    Imagine a fossilised farm - you'd expect to find mostly cows - but you'd still expect that all the dogs, foxes, rats, frogs, birds, badgers, voles, cats, rabbits and other animals would account for more than 5% of the fossils..

    Furry Version - http://www.mathematical.com/dinolystrosaur.html
    Reptilian version - http://www.fossilsasart.com/lystrosa.htm
    GondWanaLand - http://www.museums.org.za/sam/resource/palaeo/cluver/gondwana.htm

    PS. Scientists calculate that a global increase of 10°C might have been sufficient to release frozen methane hydrate during the Permian period


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 15,552 ✭✭✭✭GuanYin


    Sykeirl's Happy Science Fact of the Week #3:
    Skin Cancer accounts for nearly half of cancers diagnosed in Ireland every year. Even though we know that sun exposure causes it.
    Use sunscreen people!
    Read/Discuss more here


  • Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 90,508 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    There are bacteria that use tiny little magnets to tell them in which direction to move.

    http://john183.freeyellow.com/magntite.txt - Text
    http://www.biophysics.uwa.edu.au/STAWA/magbac_5.html - Movies
    http://www.wholeearthmag.com/ArticleBin/274.html - 2billion years
    http://redplanetlife.com/mars7.htm - Life on mars ?
    http://www.ratical.org/ratville/RofD2.html - claims humans can learn how to use their internal compass (but not if holding a bar magnet to your head)

    Also the bacteria have been used like iron filings to view magnitism in samples - though at one micron they'd be smaller - also there was talk a while back of using thier magnets for tape / hdd because they were better than anything man made in terms of size..


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 15,552 ✭✭✭✭GuanYin


    Originally posted by Capt'n Midnight
    There are bacteria that use tiny little magnets to tell them in which direction to move.

    Really? Cool!

    name/link/details?


  • Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 90,508 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    The first nuclear reactor made by Enrico Fermi & co. went critical* on December 2 - 1942 - http://www.fnal.gov/pub/about/whatis/enricofermi.html http://www.era.anl.gov/

    WRONG !

    It couldn't have happened more than a few years earlier because it took so long develop the technology and theroy to separate and then concentrate the fissile isotopes of Uranium needed.

    WRONG AGAIN !

    The first known Nuclear reactor was developed by heat loving BACTERIA nearly two billion years ago in Oklo to generate heat.
    The bacteria associated with the site may have selectively accumulated certain isotopes of uranium which caused fission to heat them and their surroundings. These bacteria were probably thermotropic and liked the heat which would have killed off competitiors.

    http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/factsheets/doeymp0010.shtml
    http://www.cerncourier.com/main/article/43/2/13
    http://www.alamut.com/proj/98/nuclearGarden/bookTexts/Lovelock_Oklo.html

    *ie. producing enough neutrons to keep the chain reaction running.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 15,552 ✭✭✭✭GuanYin


    Sykeirl's Happy Science Fact of the Week #4:
    1 in 6 Irish people suffer from food posioning every year.
    Wash your hands!
    Read/Discuss more here


  • Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 90,508 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    You can't live on Guiness alone :(

    Guinness does contain many vitamins and minerals in small quantities, but is lacking vitamin C, as well as calcium and fat.
    So, to fulfil all of your daily nutritional requirements you would need to drink
    - a glass of orange juice,
    - two glasses of milk,
    - and 47 pints of Guinness. :)

    http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/alcohol/alcohol.jsp?id=lw327


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 31,967 ✭✭✭✭Sarky


    Sounds like a wager to me...


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 15,552 ✭✭✭✭GuanYin


    Syke's Happy Science Fact of the Week #5:
    The average indoor radon level in Irish houses is 90 Bq/m3. Untreated exposure at the level 200 Bq/m3 carries a risk of about 1 in 50 of contracting fatal lung cancer.
    Read/Discuss more here


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 31,967 ✭✭✭✭Sarky


    Contrary to popular belief, a duck's quack has indeed been proven to echo.


  • Registered Users Posts: 6,560 ✭✭✭Woden


    when trying to push two atoms of a molecule together the electrostatic forces apparently cancel each other out. what stops you pushing two atoms together is actually electron spin.


  • Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 90,508 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    Cancer prevented by Aging !

    While most people would think cancer is the main thing that stops us living longer the reverse is true !
    The reason we can't live forever may be because of the bodies mechanism to prevent cancer - cells are preprogrammed to die.

    So if a cell starts to turn cancerous and grows uncontrollably it will only be able to double, say, thirty or forty times. When it reaches its allotted limit this would-be tumour is stopped dead in its tracks.

    Note: because of our size and age we will have 10,000 as many cell divisions as mice - any of which could cause cancer... So we are a lot more resistant to cancer than mice..

    telomeres - count down to cell death
    Link on Meiosis and reproduction


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 15,552 ✭✭✭✭GuanYin


    Syke's Happy Science Fact of the Week #6:
    The parasite Toxoplasma gondii is now thought to impair human motor response times and shorten attention spans.
    Over 60% of the world's population is infected.
    Read/Discuss more here


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 15,552 ✭✭✭✭GuanYin


    No idea why this was closed or by whom.

    :(


  • Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 90,508 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    What to you say to musician falling into a black hole ?
    B Flat

    "In space no one can hear you scream" but there is a black hole that has been screaming for the last 2,500 million years
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3096776.stm
    Researchers calculate that a tremendous amount of energy is needed to generate the cavities, as much as the combined energy from 100 million exploding stars.

    Much of this energy could be carried by the sound waves that should keep the gas warm. If so, the B-flat pitch of the sound wave, 57 octaves below middle-C, would have remained roughly constant for about 2.5 billion years


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,892 ✭✭✭ChocolateSauce


    If 1Kg of anti-matter came into contact with 1Kg of matter, it would release energy approximately equal 21.5 million tonnes of TNT exploding.

    Therefore, if your anti-matter self asks to shake your hand, it is your duty not to do it, as doing so will probably destroy the country you are in.


  • Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 90,508 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    Without a visual reference it's very hard to define left and right. If we could communicate with aliens we would have to rely on no-symmetric reactions like normal cobalt 60 radioactivity in a very strong magnetic field means slightly more electrons ejected from the south end. Form this you and you alien friends can work out left and right. If you meet and holds out out his left hand then run like cazy ! ( In reality the solar wind / intrasteller gas/dust would give a light show long before youze ever meet )


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,155 ✭✭✭SOL


    Any figures for that 1 Kg + 1 Kg thing? are you sure it isn't one gram of each?

    Just that in a nuclear bomb there may be 10-100kg of matter which undergoes fission to reduce its mass by a very slight ammount about 1 or 2 grams, and these typically have megatonne yields...

    So if we try E=mc^2 what do you get?


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 406 ✭✭Pgibson


    You can't live on Guiness alone :(

    Thats true.

    I need to supplement it with Whiskey on a Sunday.

    .


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 406 ✭✭Pgibson


    theozster wrote: »
    If 1Kg of anti-matter came into contact with 1Kg of matter, it would release energy approximately equal 21.5 million tonnes of TNT exploding. .

    The Perils of Modern Living
    Well up above the tropostrata
    There is a region stark and stellar
    Where, on a streak of anti-matter
    Lived Dr. Edward Anti-Teller.

    Remote from Fusion's origin,
    He lived unguessed and unawares
    With all his antikith and kin,
    And kept macassars on his chairs.

    One morning, idling by the sea,
    He spied a tin of monstrous girth
    That bore three letters: A. E. C.
    Out stepped a visitor from Earth.

    Then, shouting gladly o'er the sands,
    Met two who in their alien ways
    Were like as lentils. Their right hands
    Clasped, and the rest was gamma rays.

    -- Harold P. Furth


  • Registered Users Posts: 165 ✭✭moggins7


    Without a visual reference it's very hard to define left and right. If we could communicate with aliens we would have to rely on no-symmetric reactions like normal cobalt 60 radioactivity in a very strong magnetic field means slightly more electrons ejected from the south end. Form this you and you alien friends can work out left and right. If you meet and holds out out his left hand then run like cazy ! ( In reality the solar wind / intrasteller gas/dust would give a light show long before youze ever meet )

    why thank you me. feynman:P:P
    SOL wrote: »
    Any figures for that 1 Kg + 1 Kg thing? are you sure it isn't one gram of each?

    Just that in a nuclear bomb there may be 10-100kg of matter which undergoes fission to reduce its mass by a very slight ammount about 1 or 2 grams, and these typically have megatonne yields...

    So if we try E=mc^2 what do you get?
    am well 1kg of matter gives 16x10^9j (funny story bout that actually, well more weird!)

    anyway rapters(the birds) see in the UV light spectrum.(not sure if really sciencey but pretty cool...)


  • Registered Users Posts: 165 ✭✭moggins7


    Without a visual reference it's very hard to define left and right. If we could communicate with aliens we would have to rely on no-symmetric reactions like normal cobalt 60 radioactivity in a very strong magnetic field means slightly more electrons ejected from the south end. Form this you and you alien friends can work out left and right. If you meet and holds out out his left hand then run like cazy ! ( In reality the solar wind / intrasteller gas/dust would give a light show long before youze ever meet )
    and on a related note(well from the same lecture), the world is left handed. woo go us!!


  • Registered Users Posts: 543 ✭✭✭Jeapy


    Jeaps random fact of the day....
    Drink tap water in London, get free female sex hormones!
    There's oestrogen in London tap water due to so many women being on the pill there and excreting it in their urine. Water is recycled...men grow moobs!
    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article549956.ece


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 31 Mellowsh


    Rats can't vomit!!

    http://www.ratbehavior.org/vomit.htm

    They're also very reluctant to try new foods and will only try something new if they're almost starved to death, or if after they smell the food off another rat, they have to know that rat is healthy before they'll give it a go themselves.


  • Registered Users Posts: 60 ✭✭kujosHeist


    a teanspoonfull of material from a neutron star weighs about a billion tons http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l1/pulsars.html


  • Registered Users Posts: 22,052 ✭✭✭✭Akrasia


    Mellowsh wrote: »
    Rats can't vomit!!

    http://www.ratbehavior.org/vomit.htm

    They're also very reluctant to try new foods and will only try something new if they're almost starved to death, or if after they smell the food off another rat, they have to know that rat is healthy before they'll give it a go themselves.

    so how does rat poison work then?


  • Registered Users Posts: 22,052 ✭✭✭✭Akrasia


    Crows can hold a grudge.

    Crows can recognise individual humans who have mistreated them in the past and pass on this knowledge to other crows in the area. They can carry this grudge for years and even pass it on to future generations.
    http://boingboing.net/2008/08/26/crows-recognize-and.html


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  • Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 90,508 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    Akrasia wrote: »
    so how does rat poison work then?
    The rat bleeds to death internally so they get very thirsty and leave the premises to find water. This means they dispose of the body themselves so no stinking corpse under the floor boards.

    naked mole rats have a social structure like ants or bees. They have one queen and a caste system with workers and soldiers


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