Post something new you learn today!

[Kozak]

Today (3 days ago) I learned Android is better than IOS (purely my own opinion)

[Guest]

Today, I learned that the reason a photon's trajectory gets distorted by gravity even though they have no mass is because space-time gets distorted, and that distorts their trajectory.

[Whizzkid]

I learned that Sodium Hydroxide is not something you want on your hands!

I also learned about the existence of Polar Clock: (http://blog.pixelbreaker.com/polarclock) an awesome screensaver

Edited October 16, 2015 by Whizzkid

[Kerbal01]

I learned that rats can experience empathy, kind of neat.

[Sampa]

That it's cowl flaps, not cow flaps

[Dman979]

I learned that it only takes 3 mins, 30 secs to read all three pages of my 10 minute speech. May just change it to a 8 minute speech and talk slower.

[ChrisSpace]

I learned what it would be like if MacDonalds advertised like Apple:

[LordFerret]

I learned that coffee percolators do not live forever.

[EuSouONumero345]

I learned that I wanna know how many people of these forums speak more than one language.

Maybe a poll

[problemecium]

It wasn't exactly today, but just recently I learned that the universe's Event Horizon is closer than the Particle Horizon.

The upshot is that we can theoretically see parts of the universe today that we literally have no hope of ever visiting even in an infinite amount of time (barring FTL travel). Sobering.

[Wild Cobra]

It looks like I doubled my frame rate for large part number designs.

Since I have a four core processor that is seen as eight logical cores, I disabled hyperthreading in the BIOS. Now a core is being utilized to full capacity by Unity, and not just half of it.

KSP was using 15.04% - 15.05% of my CPU capacity according to my resource monitor. 12.5% of that would be fully utilizing one logical core. Now that I made the logical cores equal to the physical cores, it is utilizing above 27% of the CPU. 25% plus a little extra instead of 12.5% and a little extra.

[Rath]

I hear that antelopes can jump higher than the average house due to their powerful hind legs... And the fact the average houses can't jump.

I distinctly remember jumping a number of horses.

[Just Jim]

Very exciting, today I learned that Saturn's moon Enceladus really is a giant snowball!!!

These stunning photos were taken four days ago (Oct 14th, 2016), when Cassini did an 1800km fly-over Enceladus.

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/closest-ever-views-of-saturns-moon-enceladus

Edited October 19, 2015 by Just Jim
spelling

[andyle]

I found that Mars has water

[Legendary Emu]

Very exciting, today I learned that Saturn's moon Enceladus really is a giant snowball!!!

These stunning photos were taken four days ago (Oct 14th, 2016), when Cassini did an 1800km fly-over Enceladus.

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/closest-ever-views-of-saturns-moon-enceladus

Today I learned that Enceladus is actually a very Hoth planet (huehuehue).

[Dman979]

I learned that Siri is a smartSAS.

[Just Jim]

Today I learned an ironic fact... In a weird way, Big Oil actually helped save the whales...

Hear me out:

I'm building a wooden model of the whaler "Charles W. Morgan" and while I don't approve of whaling, I admire the courage it took. Back then they were basically hunting an angry mountain in a rowboat with a pointy stick. In my opinion it was wrong, but it also took real guts.

Anyway, I've been doing a lot of reading about the old whalers. And today I read the biggest reason whaling stopped in the United States is because crude oil was being discovered in Texas, and as more oil was drilled, the demand for whale oil in the US dropped to almost zero.

And so a vast majority of whaling came to a screeching halt.

I find the irony bittersweet...

[p1t1o]

Today I learned, that the X-files spawned a spin-off series called "The Lone Gunmen" featuring the exploits of Mulder's nerd/hacker friends, the eponymous Lone Gunmen.

I also learned that the pilot aired in May 2001.

I also learned that the pilot episode features a terrorist hijacking of an airliner and that the terrorists attempt to fly the airliner into the World Trade Centre, NYC.

Then I had to re-learn the date the pilot aired.

Then I was like "sayWHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT!?"

[pTrevTrevs]

Today I learned about a Soviet super sub designed in 1949 that was 112 meters long, had 16 torpedo tubes, could carry four R-1 ballistic missiles, fourteen Swallow cruise missiles, and even three midget submarines!

http://www.hisutton.com/Stalins%20Super%20Sub%20-%20Project%20P-2.html

[Dman979]

My Intro to Engineering teacher is also a space geek, and he'll let me build a model of the Space Shuttle Orbiter in Creo 3. Building double curves is hard.

[problemecium]

Apparently recent advances in geology have indicated that while not the primary driving force, oceans are indeed necessary for Earth-like plate tectonics. o_O

[Dman979]

I learned that not every page on Wikipedia can be traced to philosophy- there are two towns in India that link to each other.

[Cirocco]

I learned some D&D stuffs.

also: not today but one or two days ago, I learned a lot about the basics of how rocket engines work and I learned some nifty info about the engines currently in use by SpaceX (the merlin series, draco, superdraco) and the ones in development (raptor). I learned about active cooling, open- and closed-gas cycles and how 3D printing of metal components works.

all in all a very educational couple of days.

side-note: apparently the new raptor engines in development by spaceX will use methane as propellant instead of RP-1. As a chemical engineer specialized in petrochemistry, this gets me SUPER excited. Methane is a byproduct that is produced in large quantities when refining crude oil and is usually just burned. It's basically petrochemical waste that doesn't have a lot of market value.

Elon Musk is basically going to go to space by burning waste products....

[KerbMav]

Methane is a byproduct that is produced in large quantities when refining crude oil and is usually just burned. It's basically petrochemical waste that doesn't have a lot of market value.

Elon Musk is basically going to go to space by burning waste products....

We use Methane - via pipes like water - to heat houses and sometimes even cook (cooking on gas is THE thing apparently) ... waste product ... just burned ...

[Camacha]

I never really got why so much stuff is burned away at oil rigs, but apparently it is too expensive to do anything with it to make it viable. Somehow I feel stuff like that is not really appropriate for the age we live in any more.