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Random Science Facts Thread!


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1 hour ago, Green Baron said:

That one made me lol. Unfortunately the page referenced in the link cannot be found.

They say that cubic poop is better suited to mark the territory because it doesn't roll off the branches of trees. I am trying to imagine a scenario where the selective pressure leads to cubic poop production ... :-)

Yep - that's a puzzler for sure. Try this link instead by the way or just do an internet search for "wombat poop" or similar. :) 

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10 hours ago, PB666 said:

Cool you can have them as a pet in minecraft. poop out building materials.

I actually started thinking a bit.

Chickens = if you could make egg blocks. Not very useful for building, though, who would want a house as fragile as an egg?

Sheep = shear off building blocks. Only grass required (horribly slow, though).

 

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On 12/3/2017 at 10:14 PM, Ultimate Steve said:

I actually started thinking a bit.

Chickens = if you could make egg blocks. Not very useful for building, though, who would want a house as fragile as an egg?

 

 

Well, eggs are actually quite strong along the long axis...

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  • 3 weeks later...

List of fun facts today:

  1. The speed of gravity is the same as, or close to, the speed of light.
  2. We found a new human organ called the mesentery but we don't know what it does.
  3. It's mathematically possible to make a time machine, it's just difficult to find the materials that could let us do it.
  4. There's a new type of diabetes: Type 3c.
  5. There's a mysterious blob of hot rock building up under Northeast America.
  6. Lungs make the majority of our platelets.
  7. Time crystals are a new state of matter and we can make them.
  8. The brain eats itself when it doesn't have enough sleep.
  9. Vantablack can now be sprayed in a spray can.
  10. Direct counterfactual quantum communication without particle transmission is possible.
  11. Semi-synthetic organisms now exist, which means we sort of made our own life form.
  12. Siberia has a colossal crater called the 'doorway to the underworld' and it's permafrost is melting so fast, ancient forests are being exposed for the first time in 200,000 years.
  13. Carl Sagan was freakishly good at predicting the future, where pseudoscience and scientific illiteracy reigns.
  14. A single giant neuron that wraps around the circumference of a brain has been identified, and it is apparently thought to be linked to mammalian consciousness.
  15. The New Guinea highland wild dog, the rarest and most ancient dog, isn't extinct at all, and appears to be thriving.
  16. The appendix seems to have a purpose, as it's made a comeback in evolution multiple times, and is a haven for good bacteria, and people without it are 3 times more likely to have a recurrence of Clostridium difficile colitis, a bacterial infection that causes diarrhea, fever, nausea, and abdominal pain.
  17. A cat-sized fossil may mean we have to redraw the dinosaur family tree, where theropods are closer to ornithischians than sauropodomorphs.
  18. Polycystic ovary syndrome may start in the brain, not the ovaries.
  19. Earth might have a new continent called Zealandia, which is mostly submerged.
  20. Humans have had a bigger impact on Earth than the Great Oxidation Event 2.3 billion years ago, and scientists are calling for a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, to be officially recognized.
  21. It turns out Narwhals use their horns for hunting too, by hitting and stunning fish.
  22. Decades of Very Low Frequency (VLF) radio communications have made a protective, human-made bubble around Earth.
  23. Some farmers routinely feed red Skittles to their cattle, because it's a cheap alternative to corn.
  24. It's possible to reverse some types of brain damage caused by lack of oxygen.

 

Source:

https://www.sciencealert.com/23-science-facts-we-didn-t-know-at-the-start-of-2017

 

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It would cost about 4.585 trillion dollars to buy all the land offered by "the lunar embassy".

7 hours ago, Grand Ship Builder said:

It's mathematically possible to make a time machine, it's just difficult to find the materials that could let us do it.

What? Tell us more!

7 hours ago, Grand Ship Builder said:

There's a mysterious blob of hot rock building up under Northeast America.

Would it be possible to build it up faster artificially? Asking for a friend.

7 hours ago, Grand Ship Builder said:

Time crystals are a new state of matter and we can make them.

What do they look like?

7 hours ago, Grand Ship Builder said:

Vantablack can now be sprayed in a spray can.

Where can I get this?

7 hours ago, Grand Ship Builder said:

A cat-sized fossil may mean we have to redraw the dinosaur family tree, where theropods are closer to ornithischians than sauropodomorphs.

...How?!

 

Edit: Whoops, didn't see the link until I posted this.

Edited by ChrisSpace
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15 hours ago, Grand Ship Builder said:

List of fun facts today:

  1. The speed of gravity is the same as, or close to, the speed of light.
  2. We found a new human organ called the mesentery but we don't know what it does.
  3. It's mathematically possible to make a time machine, it's just difficult to find the materials that could let us do it.
  4. There's a new type of diabetes: Type 3c.
  5. There's a mysterious blob of hot rock building up under Northeast America.
  6. Lungs make the majority of our platelets.
  7. Time crystals are a new state of matter and we can make them.
  8. The brain eats itself when it doesn't have enough sleep.
  9. Vantablack can now be sprayed in a spray can.
  10. Direct counterfactual quantum communication without particle transmission is possible.
  11. Semi-synthetic organisms now exist, which means we sort of made our own life form.
  12. Siberia has a colossal crater called the 'doorway to the underworld' and it's permafrost is melting so fast, ancient forests are being exposed for the first time in 200,000 years.
  13. Carl Sagan was freakishly good at predicting the future, where pseudoscience and scientific illiteracy reigns.
  14. A single giant neuron that wraps around the circumference of a brain has been identified, and it is apparently thought to be linked to mammalian consciousness.
  15. The New Guinea highland wild dog, the rarest and most ancient dog, isn't extinct at all, and appears to be thriving.
  16. The appendix seems to have a purpose, as it's made a comeback in evolution multiple times, and is a haven for good bacteria, and people without it are 3 times more likely to have a recurrence of Clostridium difficile colitis, a bacterial infection that causes diarrhea, fever, nausea, and abdominal pain.
  17. A cat-sized fossil may mean we have to redraw the dinosaur family tree, where theropods are closer to ornithischians than sauropodomorphs.
  18. Polycystic ovary syndrome may start in the brain, not the ovaries.
  19. Earth might have a new continent called Zealandia, which is mostly submerged.
  20. Humans have had a bigger impact on Earth than the Great Oxidation Event 2.3 billion years ago, and scientists are calling for a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, to be officially recognized.
  21. It turns out Narwhals use their horns for hunting too, by hitting and stunning fish.
  22. Decades of Very Low Frequency (VLF) radio communications have made a protective, human-made bubble around Earth.
  23. Some farmers routinely feed red Skittles to their cattle, because it's a cheap alternative to corn.
  24. It's possible to reverse some types of brain damage caused by lack of oxygen.

 

Source:

https://www.sciencealert.com/23-science-facts-we-didn-t-know-at-the-start-of-2017

 

4s source is not entirely correct  there are not 3 types of diabetes nor have there been only three types in the last 50 years there are at least 5 types of diabetes

1. Juvenile onset autoimmune diabetes
'1'. Fulminant/autoimmune diabetes (cause by crossreaction induced by pathogens)-Basically one day you are not diabetic, the next day you cannot produce any insulin at all, if not treated you will enter a ketoacidotic coma.
'1/2' Latent autoimmune diabetes of adults. (Also known as type I/II  has a genetic distinction from type I (DQ8 linkage or DQ2 linkage) and type II (No HLA linkage) in that the most susceptible individuals are HLA DQ/DR heterozygotes)
2. Insulin independent diabetes (also known as type II or fatty liver diabetes).
And the one they listed
'2' Gestational diabetes ( a form of type II) and is somewhat related to PCOS related diabetes.

It kind of obvious, if I remove your pancreas, the alpha beta cells are going to go with it.

20. Unlikely.

23. Meaning which is worse, feed corn or red skittles to cattle . . . .they are almost equivelently bad, although dried corn has about 8% fiber that can be released its cuticle, unless the corn is first cooked most of the animals nutrients come from starch. Bovids are not genetically designed to get the overwhelming majority of their calories from glucose or starch/amylase  derived glucose as a consequence they are at higher risk of disease. Extensively lot fed animals are bad mojo . . .for the animals, for the people who raise them (carry increased resistance to antibiotics), for the people who consume them (excess amounts of a fat that at higher than recommended doses increases risk of breast and prostate cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, cardiac disease, autoimmune diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, irritable bowel disease, menorrhagia) and for the environment. Part of the opoid crisis in this country is due to excess animal fat and sugar consumption, animal fat of certain types, in excess, provides the ingredients for inflammation and pain. People take NSAIDS which lead to GI problems and late onset allergic diseases, and opioid drugs to deal with pain that diet factors into its cause.  23. Is like saying I can feed cattle ground leather shoes or skittles. Either way its not grass.

 


 

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ad 20.)

This comes up every now and then since the old subdivision including Tertiary and Quaternary was thrown overboard to emphasize that this is not about humans but about geological processes. Many felt miffed, especially quaternary scientists, and some refuse to use the correct stratigraphical units until today. "Quaternary" is the only relic of ye olden times.

http://www.stratigraphy.org/ICSchart/ChronostratChart2017-02.pdf

http://www.stratigraphy.org/upload/QuaternaryChart1.JPG

The ICS are the ones who give the names, and afaik an "Anthropocene" is not in discussion, though frequently used. I doubt artificial minerals ever find a lasting entry since they are too short lived, compared with what we are talking about in chronostratigraphy. But who knows .... :-)

 

Edit: yes, it is, how could i ignore ? Ignoramus me .... :blush:

http://quaternary.stratigraphy.org/workinggroups/anthropocene/

Edited by Green Baron
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Another victim of climate change: the green sea turtle.

The gender is determined by the temperature of the eggs during breeding. Higher temp. means more females. Female ratio is up to 99.8% in one place, 60-90% elsewhere. Effect observable since 20 years.

Published in "Current Biology".

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On 1/7/2018 at 12:44 PM, PB666 said:

 23. Is like saying I can feed cattle ground leather shoes or skittles. Either way its not grass.

While I'm fairly sure prions can't survive the leathering process, I'd like to assume that the "don't feed cow to cow" laws are sufficiently stringent to ban ground shoe leather.  Mad cow disease is not to be trifled with.

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7 hours ago, Spudmeist3r said:

Not entirely sure this goes here, but the first words said in space were “I don’t see a God up here” -Yuri Gagarin 

Not really. There's not enough evidence to suggest that he even said that during the flight, let alone while in space. Some have attributed him of saying something similar after his flight, but not during it. Really, there's not much of a reliable way to tell what the first words in space were...

Still, a brave man. 

Now, to be somewhat on-topic... The drag equation and the lift equation are nearly identical, the main difference being that the area used in the calculation is different (reference area vs. wing area) and the coefficients are different (drag vs. lift). Of course, these are the simple drag and lift equations, in reality, it gets much more complex then that.

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Cosmic ping-pong, most probably single player:

http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1802/

tl,dr: a star goes so fast here and there that it is most certainly orbiting a close black hole with ~4.4 solar masses. The alternative explanation that two very close neutron stars represent the central mass is considered improbable, but not impossible. That would be the first stellar black hole observed directly by its gravity in a globular cluster.

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On 7.1.2018 at 4:51 PM, Jack5.exe said:

OH so that why i'm so stupi- nevermind

Welcome to the selfeater club XD

On 16.1.2018 at 11:51 AM, kerbiloid said:

We can feed cow to chickens, and chickens to cows.

Now i know where comes all that "XYZ-flawored" food.... scary....

Edited by Urses
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