Random Science Facts Thread!

[Grand Ship Builder]

Hello all, today i'mma make a thread about, random science facts!

 

What do you do?

Post some random science facts!

 

 

Thanks to the people at 

for inspiring me to make this thread!

 

 

I'll start:

Some fun facts about light and shadows that may answer some questions.

1. A electron can move faster than light in water.
2. Photonic booms, sonic booms but with light instead of sound, are possible, and exist.
3. Light has force. It can move things.
4. You technically weigh more under light than in darkness, that the city of Chicago weighs pounds more on a sunny day, and light can move a spacecraft travelling from Earth to Mars 1,000 km off course.
5. The brightest point of a shadow of a circular object is the middle.

Sources and more information:

Spoiler

1. 

2.

 

 

[p1t1o]

Yay!

The Sprint Missile, a last-ditch ICBM interceptor designed in the 60-70s, travelled so fast in the lower atmosphere and got so hot, that the flame from an oxy-acetylene torch would have cooled it down.

What happens when you open a scuba-tank at the bottom of the mariana trench? It fills with water.

Some of the most toxic compounds in existence appear in bad shellfish.

Under the right conditions, the human eye can detect individual photons of visible light.

The human retina responds to X-rays in the same way as it responds to visible light. We can literally see in the X-ray spectrum. Yes we can see it through doors + walls. It doesnt come up often because we cant see it that well - the source has to be quite intense and staring into intense X-ray sources is...somewhat ill-advised.

[Green Baron]

7 hours ago, Grand Ship Builder said:

A electron can move faster than light in water.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation

[Bill Phil]

All of the planets of the solar system fit between Earth and the Moon.

[PB666]

Although the universe is less than 13.9 billion years in age, its believed to be at least 42 billion light years in diameter.

The Methuselah star has an estimated age older than the Universe.

[Steel]

52 minutes ago, PB666 said:

Although the universe is less than 13.9 billion years in age, \edit{the observable universe is} believed to be at least 42 billion light years in diameter.

The Methuselah star has an estimated age older than the Universe.

 

[NSEP]

The N1 rocket had a record of ~50 seconds of being stable. Thats alot for such an abomination!

[PB666]

Woodchucks cant chuck wood.

[Ultimate Steve]

If you took away the empty space between the nucleus and the electrons, as well as between the atoms, every person on Earth would fit into a space the size of a marble.

There are more possible games of Chess than the amount of atoms in the observable universe.

If you shuffle a Rubik's cube by moving it randomly 20 times, there is a strong chance that nobody has gotten it scrambled that way before. Congratulations, you are the first person to do something.

The russians experimented with submarine launched orbital rockets, and were somewhat successful (Shtil').

@p1t1o Also, the Nike Sprint was designed to accelerate at 100g.

(Dubious, I only found one site saying this, may be wrong) When Betelgeuse goes supernova, the resulting explosion may produce a light in the sky as bright as the moon which may remain for several weeks. This is due to happen sometime within the next few thousand years.

[Nikolai]

We live in the largest supervoid known to science (the KBC Void), a region about two billion light-years in diameter.  The Milky Way is within a few hundred million light-years of the center.

 

EDITED TO ADD A SOURCE, SINCE IT'S ALWAYS A GOOD IDEA TO HAVE THEM: https://www.space.com/37191-we-live-in-a-cosmic-void.html

Edited November 10, 2017 by Nikolai
added citation

[YNM]

To be honest, I rather like to point out how we haven't figured out how things work. So :

- We don't know how sand (and soils) flows.

- We don't know how static electricity exactly forms. In any condition ! (this includes the usual rubbing, in the clouds, and in lifesavers/sugar.)

[Terwin]

The mantis shrimp has 16 types of color receptive cones, including multiple polarization types and 5 bands of UV.

Each independently movable eye has 3 regions, giving each eye trinocular vision and depth perception.

Their claws can accelerate at 10,400g when attacking up to 23m/s from a standing start, causing cavitation bubbles and giving them a massive 1-2 punch that can kill their prey even if they miss.

They have been known to break the glass in aquariums.

 Their eyes are being studies for developing new optical materials and their appendages are being studies for structural materials. 

They can see the world in colors we could never dream of, and they are highly efficient death-machines

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantis_shrimp

 

[cubinator]

Our poles may be starting to flip right now!

[magnemoe]

5 minutes ago, cubinator said:

Our poles may be starting to flip right now!

Betelgeuse is more likely to give us an lightshow first  
But yes pole flip is an thing, 

[cubinator]

Just now, magnemoe said:

Betelgeuse is more likely to give us an lightshow first  
But yes pole flip is an thing, 

https://phys.org/news/2017-01-earth-magnetic-poles-swap-affect.html

This next flip is predicted to occur in the next 2,000 years. Betelgeuse is due in 100,000.

[Lukaszenko]

If you lined up all of Earth's viruses end-to-end, they would create a column ~200 million light years long.

[Green Baron]

There is no clear sign of intraspecies violence among humans before the end of the palaeolithic.

(The few unclear ones can easily be explained with taphonomy, accidents, ritual buryings or simply misinterpretations)

Edited October 31, 2017 by Green Baron

[CastleKSide]

We still do not know how bicycles stay upright. The standard explanations involve gyroscopic stabilization, however scientists have build bikes with extra counter rotating wheels to cancel this effect and they still work.

[Lukaszenko]

It is possible to sail directly downwind, faster than the wind. 

[Green Baron]

Simple answer: no. (Edit: or you're cheating with the engine)

Downwind only the wind resistance counts and how much cloth you can hang into it. Downwind is for a sloop a difficult course as the sails always want to swing from one side to the other. In the case of the main this can lead to serious damage of the rig if the mains swings over violently. This is called a bad gybe. On the other side, if you're a good helmsman and the sea is calm, a butterfly is nice to sail, but takes up concentration continuously. Better stay away from that course if you're not really good at it (and if its your boat ;-)).

 

For a tallship with a square rig downwind makes no sense at all because only one mast is directly exposed to the wind.

 

Edited November 2, 2017 by Green Baron

[Urses]

All of star objects(galaxies, familys and so on) in our region are on the way to a singular point named the "big attraktor"... but they can never reach it because of expansion effects. Some of sciencist postulate the presence of a "big distraktor" too. A fact as known at the moment.

The gun powder was a mistake. The belived search objekt for his invention was a asian version of a "philosophers stone".

Against all myths chinese wall is not visible from space. No one building in human History was visible this way.

Human body have a realy unbelibavable potentials. Think on a mother who lifts a car from her child. But we have a psychological limiter to prevent ourself from selfdestroying.

[FleshJeb]

On 10/31/2017 at 2:25 AM, Lukaszenko said:

If you lined up all of Earth's viruses end-to-end, they would create a column ~200 million light years long.

I... I... I may have to stop using Tinder...

[Lukaszenko]

4 hours ago, Green Baron said:

Simple answer: no. (Edit: or you're cheating with the engine)

It is theoretically possible, because the wind can contain more than enough energy that  the craft needs to travel at or above its speed.  Practically harnessing that energy is a different matter...

...but also possible, and by purely mechanical means:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackbird_(land_yacht)

 

Edited November 2, 2017 by Lukaszenko

[Green Baron]

Ahoy, even if that is really true, that is not sailing and that is not a yacht. Google redefines many things, including intelligence, but that's another threat(d).

 

Very complex high performance rigs (especially rigid wing rigs) can sail faster than the wind an a broad reach course (100-130° apparent wind angle), like the 2013 AC yachts, but only in calm conditions and on a flat sea. A little ripple and a bow gets stuck in the water, a weak gust and the rig flies apart. Even that was not considered "sailing" any more among many sailors.

Sailing directly downwind faster than the wind is like sailing directly upwind against the wind.

 

 

 

Unrelated: a mid range consumer level graphics card can easily render 20.000.000 vertices at 60 fps.

Edited November 2, 2017 by Green Baron

[Lukaszenko]

It is possible to be pushed, purely mechanically, purely by wind, directly downwind, to a speed greater than said wind.

It's not as succinct, but since we're being pedantic