Fun Fact Thread! (previously fun fact for the day, not limited to 1 per day anymore.)

[Codraroll]

(image source)

This is mighty K2, the second tallest mountain in the world at 8,609 meters. An awe-striking, massive cone of a mountain, rising some four thousand meters from its 4600-meter base in the Karakoram mountain range, right on the border between Pakistan and China. It is noticeably taller than its surrounding mountains, a king of the local landscape. Its Western name is of course K2, but in local mythology it is revered as ...

... uh, hold on ...

*checks notes*

Oh.

Until it was noticed by British surveyors, who spotted it from afar and labelled it "K2", shorthand for "The second peak from the left up in Karakoram, as seen from our vantage point right here", during a surveying expedition in 1856, nobody even knew this mountain existed. K2 is in the middle of nowhere, even as far as the locals of the area are concerned. Getting even close to it requires a weeks-long trek along a glacier. The view of K2 is blocked by nearby mountains from every inhabited location (the nearest of which is 65 km away), although it might occasionally be visible from the lower parts of the Baltoro Glacier - which itself was considered too remote and desolate for the locals of nearby villages to bother with. "Up that valley is a glacier, probably nothing interesting is beyond that." And apparently you'd have to hang around on the Baltoro Glacier for quite a while before getting a glimpse of K2, due to the frequently cloudy weather conditions in the area. For the same reason, hanging around on the Baltoro Glacier for a while is not a very good idea.

So K2's original and local name is, well, K2. That surveying expedition had a policy of using local names for the mountains they surveyed wherever possible, but came up short for K2. The peaks denoted K1, K3, K4, and K5 were eventually identified and their names found out, but K2 wasn't known to anybody and so didn't have a local name. K2 stuck.

In later years, the mountain has sometimes been called "Chogori", but that's just a direct translation of "big mountain" in the local language, and apparently it wasn't even the locals who coined it. The Chinese government apparently sinified that word into "Qogir", which is their official name for the mountain, but it's not a local name. It appears that in the local languages, the widely used name for K2 nowadays is ... Ketu. No need to guess where that word came from.

So yeah, the second highest mountain in the word had no name and wasn't known to anybody before 1856.

As a bonus fun fact, the same applies to the neighbouring mountain Broad Peak, which is the 12th highest mountain in the world at 8,051 meters.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

1 hour ago, Codraroll said:

checks notes

Reported. 

 

(best 'fun fact' post in quite a while!) 

[steve9728]

19 hours ago, Codraroll said:

In later years, the mountain has sometimes been called "Chogori", but that's just a direct translation of "big mountain" in the local language, and apparently it wasn't even the locals who coined it. The Chinese government apparently sinified that word into "Qogir", which is their official name for the mountain, but it's not a local name. It appears that in the local languages, the widely used name for K2 nowadays is ... Ketu. No need to guess where that word came from.

The info about this from the Chinese internet is "it's named from Tajik word meaning 'tall and majestic'."

I'm glad the mountain is high enough without humans letting it conjure up some kind of weird imagery and naming it after some body part.

You see, no one in the world really cares about who came in second.

Edited September 14, 2023 by steve9728

[magnemoe]

51 minutes ago, steve9728 said:

The info about this from the Chinese internet is "it's named from Tajik word meaning 'tall and majestic'."

I'm glad the mountain is high enough without humans letting it conjure up some kind of weird imagery and naming it after some body part.

You see, no one in the world really cares about who came in second.

I say an unseen mountain is rare outside of Antarctica however, but Antarctica  was discovered after Neptune who also is an fun fact and not really explored until the 20't century. 

[farmerben]

Quote

Radio emissions of cyclotron radiation due to interaction of charged particles in the interstellar medium as they spiral around the magnetic field lines of a magnetic sail would have a frequency of approximately (120�/�) kHz, where � is the spacecraft velocity and � the speed of light.^[38] The Earth's ionosphere would prevent detection on the surface, but a space-based antenna could detect such emissions up to several thousands of light years away. Detection of such radiation could indicate activity of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations.

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

 

Magnetic sails are probably the best way to decelerate a spacecraft from relativistic speeds.  They would put out a radio signal detectable from far away, but not from the surface of the Earth.

Edited September 15, 2023 by farmerben

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

2 hours ago, farmerben said:

Magnetic sails are probably the best way to decelerate a spacecraft from relativistic speeds

So... Does that mean magnetic sails are the best way to speed up a ship to relativistic speeds? 

[magnemoe]

2 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

So... Does that mean magnetic sails are the best way to speed up a ship to relativistic speeds? 

No, laser pumped solar sails it the best way to accelerate and then decelerate, downside is that you need an colony at the other end to set up the laser. 
Magnetic sails don't need that, but braking force is much weaker unless they are very large, think light minutes. 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

44 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

No, laser pumped solar sails it the best way to accelerate and then decelerate, downside is that you need an colony at the other end to set up the laser. 
Magnetic sails don't need that, but braking force is much weaker unless they are very large, think light minutes. 

Ah, good.  We should see them coming in time to head out to New Mexico and make the 'special' punch! 

[farmerben]

We can't see them now.  With a big radio telescope on the far side of the moon we could.

[kerbiloid]

7 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Ah, good.  We should see them coming in time to head out to New Mexico and make the 'special' punch! 

Why brake when heading out to New Mexico?

I could understand Alabama. It's just stupid to lithobrake a whole interstellar ship into crop fields.

[DDE]

Comparison of various Russian chronicles revealed a pervasive discrepancy between some dates of exactly one year. This was reconciled by reverse-engineering two different dating styles. The basis was the Byzantine count from the creation of the world (a belated happy 7532, BTW), and whereas the Byzantines used September 1 as New Year's Eve, Russia, Northern Italian city states and England all used March 1... but there was no alignment on whether this meant 6 months earlier or 6 months later! This results in two coexisting approaches - the March chronology (calculus Pisanus) and the Ultramarch chronology (calculus Florentinus). Further, the date could also be fudged to fit with a new moon, so you also get the Circamarch chronology and the Circaultramarch chronology.

Ivan III as part of his general aping off of the Byzantines just fixed everything at September 1 in 7000/1492.

Spoiler

One part of Ivan III's newly-introduced sequence was celebration was the first public speech once the heir apparent came of age. Also, when Ivan III's great-grandson left no heirs, September 1 1598 saw the coronation of the regent Boris Godunov. The later "emergency monarchs" were crowned in decidedly more do-or-die circumstances and did not get too picky about the date.

Skip forward some centuries, and on midday of December 31 1999 Boris Yeltsin addresses the nation to tell everyone he's quitting in favor of a certain prime minister of his, and the subsequent midnight address became a passing of the torch between a former president and an acting president...

 

[Superluminal Gremlin]

On 9/12/2023 at 8:27 PM, magnemoe said:

I knew you could get floating islands but not so large. 

The Subnautica theme starts playing...

It did look like it was disintegrating though,  at 0:09 there is some dirt coming of the island by the looks of it

 

[kerbiloid]

Is whale herding legal?

What if declare it a self-propelled eco-island?

Spoiler

 

Edited September 20, 2023 by kerbiloid

[magnemoe]

3 hours ago, Superluminal Gremlin said:

The Subnautica theme starts playing...

It did look like it was disintegrating though,  at 0:09 there is some dirt coming of the island by the looks of it

 

Read a bout it a bit after posting apparently people has made artificial floating islands out of reeds for a long time so the idea is not stupid. 
The island is pretty old, its moved to prevent it from crashing into a bride who could destroy both. 

[Codraroll]

8 hours ago, magnemoe said:

The island is pretty old, its moved to prevent it from crashing into a bride who could destroy both. 

That would really put a damper on the wedding, too.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Na, I ain't sayin she's a big girl... 

But she ain't passin up no cheeseburger, cheeseburger 

[FleshJeb]

I just googled "DART Mission"

The results were amusing.

[magnemoe]

On 9/21/2023 at 12:35 AM, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Na, I ain't sayin she's a big girl... 

But she ain't passin up no cheeseburger, cheeseburger 

Is people from Hamburg hamburgers, I once ate and hamburger in Hamburg, does it make me an cannibal? Should break that habit as in being an cannibal. Some called me an potato player and I still eat potatoes so questionable. 

[SunlitZelkova]

TIL China is replacing some of the DF-21 MRBM with the DF-26 IRBM. This loosely parallels the replacement of the R-12 MRBM with the Pioner.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

42 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

TIL China is replacing some of the DF-21 MRBM with the DF-26 IRBM. This loosely parallels the replacement of the R-12 MRBM with the Pioner.

Translate for us duffers? 

[steve9728]

There's a shoe brand in China called Xtep. They registered the trademark as such until at least 2008:

Don't get what I mean? Let's turn it 180°

Hey Elon!

[Superfluous J]

2 hours ago, steve9728 said:

There's a shoe brand in China called Xtep. They registered the trademark as such until at least 2008:

Don't get what I mean? Let's turn it 180°

Hey Elon!

That's nothing.

[steve9728]

1 minute ago, Superfluous J said:

That's nothing.

Although I don’t know how to design, but I know how to Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V perfectly. So I decide to send a CV to them

[SunlitZelkova]

21 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Translate for us duffers? 

The DF-21 is/was China’s premier ballistic missile for targeting stuff in Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia. It was easy to intercept for the Patriot. The nuclear and conventional versions were also clearly defined, and it was known there were fewer nuclear ones than conventional.

In contrast, the DF-26 is an IRBM. Patriot can’t do jack poop against it, making it easier for it to get through ballistic missile defences. It’s also dual capable, meaning every DF-26 could possibly have a nuclear warhead.

To me, this reminds me of when the less capable, borderline stationary, liquid fueled SS-4 Sandal MRBM was replaced by the MIRVed, mobile, solid fueled SS-20 Saber, resulting in a scare in Europe.

[steve9728]

3 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

The DF-21 is/was China’s premier ballistic missile for targeting stuff in Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia. It was easy to intercept for the Patriot. The nuclear and conventional versions were also clearly defined, and it was known there were fewer nuclear ones than conventional.

In contrast, the DF-26 is an IRBM. Patriot can’t do jack poop against it, making it easier for it to get through ballistic missile defences. It’s also dual capable, meaning every DF-26 could possibly have a nuclear warhead.

To me, this reminds me of when the less capable, borderline stationary, liquid fueled SS-4 Sandal MRBM was replaced by the MIRVed, mobile, solid fueled SS-20 Saber, resulting in a scare in Europe.

It’s reasonable for this 30-year service veteran to retire. However, I’m not quite sure of your source, I want to say that DF-21 is in the middle prime of its life. Roughly like the CNSA’s CZ-2B and it’s “relatives”. Well stocked, technically reliable, and easy to use only means one thing for PLA/CNSA: the user can put whatever they want on it, such as something hypersonic.